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AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE 
PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •  BOSTON  •  CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
OF  CANADA,  Limited 

TORONTO 


An  Introduction  to  the 
Psychology  of  Religion 


BY 

ROBERT  H.  THOULESS,  M.A. 

FELLOW  OF  CORPUS  CHRISTI  COLLEGE,  CAM¬ 
BRIDGE,  LECTURER  1 1ST  PSYCHOLOGY  AT  THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF  MANCHESTER 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1931 


All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1923. 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


All  rights  reserved — no  part  of  this  book  may  be  reproduced  in 
any  form  without  permission  in  writing  from  the  publisher. 


Set  up  and  printed.  Published  January,  1923. 
Reprinted  March,  1931. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America  by 

J.  J.  LITTLE  AND  IVES  COMPANY,  NEW  YORK 


PREFACE 

T  he  present  book  is  the  result  of  a  request  to  put  into 
book  form  the  substance  of  lectures  delivered  to  ordi¬ 
nation  candidates  during  the  Long  Vacation  at  Cam¬ 
bridge.  This  fact  explains  its  scope.  While  it  is  hoped 
that  it  may  appeal  to  professed  psychologists  as  well, 
it  is  intended  primarily  for  those  who  wish  to  study 
the  psychological  problems  of  religion,  without  any 
prior  knowledge  of  psychological  terminology.  It  must 
be  judged  chiefly  by  its  success  or  failure  in  meeting 
the  needs  of  this  class  of  readers.  The  author’s  excuse 
for  adding  to  the  enormous  volume  of  literature  dealing 
with  religious  subjects  is  that  there  seemed  to  be  a 
niche  in  such  readers’  requirements  which  no  existing 
book  quite  filled,  and  he  has  attempted  to  fill  it. 

It  is  difficult  adequately  to  acknowledge  my  personal 
obligations  to  the  many  friends  who  have  given  help 
and  encouragement  in  the  preparation  of  this  volume. 
Dr  Rivers,  whose  recent  death  leaves  such  a  sad  gap  in 
the  ranks  of  Cambridge  psychologists,  read  through  all 
the  typescript  and  gave  valuable  advice.  I  am  equally 
indebted  for  the  same  help  to  Professor  Sorley  and  Mr 
Spens.  Father  Cary,  S.S.J.E.,  read  and  criticised  the 
chapters  on  Prayer  and  Mysticism.  Professor  Pear 
and  Mr  Mackay  very  kindly  read  through  my  proofs. 

The  Editors  of  Theology  and  The  Quest  generously 
gave  permission  for  the  reprint  (with  modifications)  of 
articles  which  originally  appeared  in  their  papers. 


Corpus  Christi  College 
Cambridge 

June ,  1922. 


R.  H.  T. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  The  Psychology  of  Religion .  1 

II  The  Traditional  Element  in  Religious 

Belief . 16 

III  The  Natural  Element . 30 

IV  The  Moral  Element . 45 

V  The  Affective  Element . 58 

VI  The  Rational  Element . 78 

VII  Conscious  Processes . 92 

VIII  The  Unconscious . 102 

IX  The  Instincts . 117 

X  The  Sex-Instinct  and  Religion  .  .  .  127 

XI  The  Herd-Instinct  and  Religion  .  .  .  140 

XII  Worship  and  Prayer . 159 

XIII  Conversion . 187 

XIV  Mystical  and  Adolescent  Conversions  .  205 

XV  Mysticism . 225 

XVI  A  Modern  Mystic . 242 

XVII  General  Considerations . 260 

Index . 283 


AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE 
PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

A  serious  difficulty  is  introduced  into  the  task  of 
writing  an  introduction  to  the  psychological  study  of 
religion  by  the  fluid  state  of  the  science  of  psychology 
and  particularly  of  its  terminology.  Since  the  object  of 
the  present  book  is  not  primarily  to  teach  its  readers 
psychology,  it  would  merely  be  a  waste  of  time  to 
discuss  the  merits  of  alternative  psychological  theories 
when  we  come  to  matters  about  which  there  is  dispute. 
In  order  to  avoid  this  waste,  it  will  be  necessary  at  such 
points  to  limit  myself  to  a  description  of  the  theory 
which  seems  to  me  to  be  the  one  which  has  most  chance 
of  proving  to  be  of  permanent  value,  with  an  indication 
of  the  terminology  which  I  intend  to  use.  Where  I 
am  differing  widely  from  the  more  conservative 
psychologists,  I  propose  to  mention  the  existence  of 
alternatives  without  arguing  about  them.  This  proce¬ 
dure  will  make  the  psychological  part  of  this  book 
appear  to  be  very  dogmatic,  but  it  is  necessary  if  I  am 
to  avoid  confusing  and  wearying  those  of  my  readers 
whose  knowledge  of  pure  psychology  is  slight.  This 
appearance  of  dogmatism  wmuld,  I  hope,  have  been 
avoided  if  I  had  attempted  to  wHte  a  book  on  pure 
psychology;  but,  for  my  present  purpose,  it  is  only 
necessary  that  I  should  make  my  owTn  position  and  use 
of  language  clear  so  that  I  may  not  be  misunderstood. 

The  first  subject  that  it  is  necessary  to  discuss  is  the 
meaning  we  intend  to  attach  to  the  word  religion.  It 

l 


2 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


is  not,  perhaps,  necessary  to  reach  an  academically 
satisfactory  definition  of  religion,  but  we  must  come  to 
a  sufficient  agreement  about  the  use  of  the  word  to  set 
some  limits,  however  vague,  to  the  subjects  we  propose 
to  discuss  under  the  psychology  of  religion.  We  must 
avoid  the  temptation,  common  amongst  writers  on 
religion,  of  defining  it  too  narrowly,  and  thus  unduly 
limiting  the  scope  of  our  discussion.  Such  writers 
remind  us  of  Mr  Thwackum  who  when  he  mentioned 
religion  meant  the  Christian  religion;  and  not  only 
the  Christian  religion,  but  the  Protestant  religion ;  and 
not  only  the  Protestant  religion,  but  the  Church  of 
England. 

If,  for  example,  with  Hegel  we  define  religion  as  “the 
knowledge  possessed  by  the  finite  mind  of  its  nature  as 
absolute  mind,”  we  are  making  the  meaning  of  religion 
far  narrower  than  it  is  in  common  speech,  for  it  would 
appear  from  this  definition  that  a  man  can  only  be 
religious  if  he  is  a  metaphysician.  Similarly,  we  must 
not  define  religion  in  such  a  way  as  to  imply  that  a  man 
cannot  be  religious  unless  he  is  good.  Many  persons,  as 
for  example,  Cellini,  have  been  extremely  religious  and 
extremely  wicked.  This  fact  rules  out  such  a  definition 
as  that  of  F.  W.  H.  Myers — that  religion  is  “the  sane 
and  normal  response  of  the  human  spirit  to  all  that  we 
know  of  cosmic  law.”  1 

In  Professor  Leuba’s  A  Psychological  Study  of 
Religion  2  there  is  a  valuable  and  interesting  appendix 
in  which  he  has  collected  no  less  than  forty-eight  dif¬ 
ferent  definitions  of  religion  from  various  writers.  Of 
these  forty-eight  definitions,  I  wish  to  draw  attention  to 
three  only  which  will  be  sufficient  to  serve  as  illustra- 

1  Human  Personality  (London,  1903),  n.  p.  284. 

3  New  York,  1912. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION  3 

tions  of  the  three  different  classes  into  which  most  of 
the  others  may  be  divided. 

The  first  is  given  by  Frazer  in  The  Golden  Bough: 
“By  religion,  then,  I  understand  a  propitiation  or  con¬ 
ciliation  of  powers  superior  to  man  which  are  believed 
to  direct  and  control  the  course  of  Nature  and  of  human 
life.”  1  The  second  comes  from  A  Study  of  Religion  by 
James  Martineau.  To  him,  religion  is  “the  belief  in  an 
everliving  God,  that  is,  in  a  Divine  Mind  and  Will 
ruling  the  Universe  and  holding  moral  relations  with 
mankind.”  2  The  third  is  Dr  McTaggart’s  definition  in 
Some  Dogmas  of  Religion:  “Religion  is  clearly  a  state 
of  mind.  ...  It  seems  to  me  that  it  may  best  be 
described  as  an  emotion  resting  on  a  conviction  of  har¬ 
mony  between  ourselves  and  the  universe  at  large.”  3 

A  scrutiny  of  these  three  definitions  shows  that  they 
are  applying  the  word  religion  to  three  completely 
different  things.  The  first  describes  a  mode  of  be¬ 
haviour,  the  second  an  intellectual  belief  or  opinion,  the 
third  a  system  of  feelings.  It  is  possible  to  regard  reli¬ 
gion  as  any  one  of  these  three  things  or  as  any  combi¬ 
nation  of  them.  It  seems,  however,  more  consistent 
with  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the  wTord  religion  to  treat 
all  three  as  essential  elements  in  it.  We  should,  for 
example,  refuse  the  name  religion  to  an  opinion  that 
there  was  in  fact  a  God,  if  that  opinion  had  no  influence 
at  all  on  the  holder’s  behaviour. 

Our  definition  of  religion  will,  therefore,  include  in 
association  a  mode  of  behaviour,  a  system  of  intellec¬ 
tual  beliefs  and  a  system  of  feelings.  In  order  to  find  a 
complete  and  satisfactory  definition,  we  must  further 
enquire  what  is  the  particular  mark  of  the  conduct, 
beliefs  and  feelings  in  question  which  characterises 

12nd  ed.  (London,  1911),  i.  p.  63.  2p.  1.  3p.  3. 


4 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


them  as  religious.  To  this  question  many  different 
answers  have  been  given.  Hoff  cling  calls  a  belief  in 
The  conservation  of  value’  the  distinctive  character  of 
religion;  Royce  thinks  that  it  is  loyalty.  The  man  in 
the  street  would  probably  reply  that  it  is  the  belief  in 
God,  and  (remembering  the  existence  of  polytheistic 
religions)  he  might  add  ‘or  in  gods.’  I  see  no  sufficient 
reason  for  not  adopting  this  as  the  distinctive  character 
of  religion.  In  order  to  avoid  the  use  of  the  undefined 
word  god,  it  may  conveniently  be  replaced  by  the  term 
superhuman  being  ( superhuman  implying  nothing 
more  than  that  the  being  in  question  is  felt  to  be 
greater  than  man,  and  may  be  looked  up  to  by  him). 
Our  definition  will  then  run  in  some  such  form  as  this: 
Religion  is  a  felt  practical  relationship  with  what  is 
believed  in  as  a  superhuman  being  or  beings. 

This  definition  will  be  found  to  be  sufficient  for  the 
purpose  for  which  we  require  it — to  indicate  the  sense 
in  which  the  word  religion  will  be  used  in  the  course  of 
this  book.  Possibly  for  a  different  purpose,  a  different 
definition  would  have  been  found  more  convenient.  It 
will  be  noticed  that  no  mention  has  been  made  of  the 
marks  which  theologians  often  introduce  into  their 
definitions  of  God — self-existence,  infinity,  and  eter¬ 
nity.  These  things  have  no  meaning  except  on  a  level 
of  intellectual  development  which  most  religious  per¬ 
sons,  even  though  they  be  monotheists,  have  not 
reached.  In  the  scientific  study  of  religion  it  would  be 
absurd  to  include  them  as  essential  marks  of  religious 
beliefs  unless  we  intended  to  confine  our  study  to  the 
religion  of  philosophers. 

There  are  two  terms  in  common  use  in  the  psychology 
of  religion  which  must  be  explained.  These  are  the 
religious  conscious?iess,  and  religious  experience .  The 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


O 


religious  consciousness  is  that  part  of  religion  which  is 
present  to  the  mind  and  is  open  to  examination  by 
introspection.  It  is  the  mental  side  of  religious  activ¬ 
ity.  Religious  experience  is  a  vaguer  term  used  to 
describe  the  feeling  element  in  the  religious  conscious¬ 
ness — the  feelings  which  lead  to  religious  belief  or  are 
the  effects  of  religious  behaviour.  Examples  of  what  is 
meant  by  religious  experience  are:  the  sense  of  the 
presence  of  God  described  by  the  mystics,  which  also  is 
not  very  uncommon  amongst  other  people ;  the  feeling 
of  peace  after  prayer  or  sacrament;  and  the  less 
intense,  hardly  perceptible,  emotional  undercurrent 
which  accompanies  ordinary  religious  life. 

The  main  business  of  the  psychology  of  religion  is  to 
study  the  religious  consciousness.  But  it  is  impossible 
to  study  that  alone;  we  must  investigate  religious 
behaviour  as  well.  Modern  psychology7  has  become 
fruitful  by  giving  up  the  attempt  to  confine  itself  to 
mind  alone,  and  including  human  behaviour  in  its  field. 
All  experimental  psychology  is  a  study  of  behaviour, 
and  the  American  school  of  behaviourists  confine  them¬ 
selves  entirely  to  this  study,  and  refuse  to  concern 
themselves  with  the  mind  at  all.  In  order  to  make  the 
study  of  the  psychology  of  religion  fruitful,  we  must 
include  religious  behaviour  as  part  of  the  problem  to  be 
investigated. 

The  method  of  the  psychology  of  religion  is  the 
method  of  science — the  study  of  the  facts  which  come 
within  its  province  in  an  objective  and  impartial  man¬ 
ner.  As  far  as  possible,  we  must  try7  to  approach  it  with 
none  of  the  prejudices  for  or  against  particular  religious 
customs  or  beliefs  which  result  from  our  opinions  about 
their  truth  or  value.  We  must  examine  the  strange 
writings  of  the  erotic  mystics  and  the  wilder  American 


6 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


revivals  with  the  same  scientific  respect  as  we  show  to 
the  services  of  matins  and  evensong  in  the  established 
church.  We  must  not  be  ready  to  damn  them  at  once 
with  that  invaluable  word  pathological.  It  is  possible 
that  a  study  of  what  are  called  pathological  forms  of 
the  religious  consciousness  may  be  of  great  value  in  the 
elucidation  of  the  workings  of  the  normal  religious 
mind.  The  questions  of  truth  and  value  raised  by  them 
belong  properly  to  the  philosophy  of  religion. 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  true  that  we  cannot,  in  the 
end,  be  content  to  rest  in  mere  description.  For  most 
of  us  the  practical  interest  of  the  psychology  of  religion 
— its  bearing  on  the  question  of  the  truth  and  value  of 
religion — is  far  greater  than  our  interest  in  its  purely 
theoretical  side.  Unless  wTe  are  to  ignore  this  practical 
interest  altogether,  we  cannot  help  encroaching  to  this 
extent  on  the  field  of  the  philosophy  of  religion.  I 
intend  to  neglect  these  questions  at  present,  and  to 
return  to  them  later. 

The  psychology  of  religion  is  an  attempt  to  express 
the  workings  of  the  mind  when  it  is  religious  in  terms 
of  the  mental  processes  we  have  discovered  in  secular 
psychology.  It  makes  the  reasonable  assumption 
(which  wTould  be  discredited  by  our  total  failure  to  con¬ 
struct  a  scientific  psychology  of  religion)  that  a  man’s 
mind  works  in  the  same  way  in  his  religion  as  it  does  in 
his  other  activities.  The  psychologist  is  no  more 
necessarily  concerned  with  the  question  of  whether 
religious  experience  is  caused  by  anything  outside  the 
subject  than  is  the  physicist  with  the  question  of  the 
reality  of  matter.  It  is  true  that  most  psychologists  do 
in  fact  interest  themselves  in  trying  to  show  either  that 
all  the  phenomena  of  religious  experience  can  be  ex¬ 
plained  without  any  religious  assumptions,  or  that  they 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


7 


do  point  to  an  agent  outside  the  individual  experiencing 
them.  This,  however,  is  only  an  interesting  and  im¬ 
portant  application  of  the  psychologist’s  results;  the 
conclusion  he  comes  to  will  not  influence  him  funda¬ 
mentally  in  his  descriptive  work.  Whatever  the  origin 
of  the  mental  states  of  religion,  we  assume  that  once 
they  are  in  a  man’s  mind  they  will  obey  ordinary 
mental  laws;  in  other  words,  that  they  will  prove 
amenable  to  treatment  by  the  methods  of  ordinary 
psychology. 

In  this,  I  am  dissociating  myself  entirely  from  that 
school  whose  conception  of  the  task  of  the  psychology 
of  religion  is  that  it  is  to  create  a  new  and  mystifying 
psychology  for  religion  alone.  It  explains  every  new 
fact  by  the  creation  of  some  fresh  mental  faculty,  which 
it  christens  with  some  such  name  as  transcendental 
consciousness.  When  its  inventive  genius  for  new 
faculties  fails,  it  brings  in  the  mystery  of  the  sub¬ 
conscious  or  the  more  ethically  pretentious  supracon- 
scious.  The  objection  to  it  is,  of  course,  the  objection 
to  all  faculty  psychology — that  it  explains  nothing  but 
creates  entities  which  are  no  more  than  the  facts 
themselves  which  they  were  required  to  explain.  So 
long  as  it  claims  to  be  merely  description,  there  is  no 
objection  to  this,  provided  that  its  terminology  is 
simple  and  useful.  If  it  claims  to  be  scientific  explana¬ 
tion,  it  is  mere  charlatanism. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  method  of  approach  we 
are  adopting  is  a  very  undesirable  one  to  apply  to 
religion.  Scientific  method  itself  tends  to  destroy  that 
atmosphere  of  reverence  which  should  surround  reli¬ 
gion,  and  thus  brings  it  down  to  the  level  of  other 
activities.  This  is  an  objection  with  which  we  must 
sympathise;  but  it  is  not,  I  think,  sufficiently  well 


8 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


grounded.  LTnless  religion  is  in  reality  a  fancy  woven 
by  man  out  of  his  own  mind,  no  scientific  analysis  will 
prove  it  so.  On  the  other  hand,  if  (as  is  freely  assumed 
by  modern  writers  on  religion)  psychology  can  produce 
real  support  for  religion,  it  is  clear  that  the  value  of  our 
study  of  the  psychology  of  religion  will  be  proportion¬ 
ate  to  the  completeness  with  which  we  detach  our 
minds  from  our  own  beliefs  and  judgments.  An  inves¬ 
tigation  which  was  only  concerned  with  the  facts  which 
seemed  to  support  religion,  which  hesitated  to  go  any 
further  when  it  appeared  to  be  discovering  natural 
explanations  for  what  had  previously  been  supposed  to 
be  supernatural  processes,  would  obviously  be  of  no 
value  at  all  as  evidence.  The  strength  of  any  evidence 
that  a  scientific  study  of  the  religious  consciousness  can 
bring  for  the  reality  of  the  objects  of  religion  will  de¬ 
pend  entirely  on  how  far  we  have  made  that  study  in  a 
scientific  spirit,  without  either  over-emphasising  the 
facts  which  support  religion  or  neglecting  those  which 
appear  to  discredit  it. 

To  those  who  think  that  such  a  study  is  better  not 
undertaken  at  all  lest  religious  faith  should  be  dis¬ 
turbed,  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  that  all  these  ques¬ 
tions  are  already  being  raised.  We  cannot  get  back 
into  a  condition  in  which  they  have  not  been  raised  at 
all.  If  any  individual  feels  that  he  does  not  wish  to 
disturb  his  own  religious  faith  by  questioning  its  foun¬ 
dations,  he  has  a  perfect  right  not  to  do  so.  But  he 
should  not  be  reading  a  book  on  the  psychology  of  reli¬ 
gion  ;  if,  by  a  mistake,  he  is,  the  right  course  for  him  to 
adopt  is  to  close  it  at  this  point  and  to  read  no  further. 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  probable  that  the  extent  to 
wThich  the  psychological  study  of  religion  has  power  to 
dissolve  religious  faith  is  exaggerated.  When  the  psy- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


9 


chologist  describes  what  he  believes  to  be  the  mental 
laws  by  which  such  an  event  as  a  conversion  takes 
place,  he  in  no  way  excludes  the  explanation  of  it  which 
would  be  given  by  the  Salvation  Army — that  it  takes 
place  by  the  Grace  of  God.  The  physiologist’s  expla¬ 
nation  that  a  movement  in  my  finger  took  place  by 
muscular  contractions  brought  about  by  a  neural 
current  started  by  a  change  (possibly  chemical)  in  the 
cerebral  cortex,  in  no  way  excludes  the  equally  true 
explanation  that  I  moved  my  finger  because  I  wanted 
to.  The  psychologist  and  the  Salvationist  are  explain¬ 
ing  the  same  event  on  different  levels.  Both  may  be 
equally  right.  The  psychologist  may,  of  course,  have  a 
private  opinion  that  the  explanation  of  the  Salvationist 
is  wrong,  but  on  this  question  he  has  no  more  right  to 
dogmatise  than  anyone  else.  He  may  be  wrong,  and 
the  Salvationist  may  know  that  he  is  wrong.  To  one 
who  is  sure  that  he  has  the  vision  of  God,  the  scientific 
psychologist  of  religion  can  be  no  more  than  a  blind 
man  talking  about  colours. 

The  method  of  a  psychological  study  of  religion 
which  claims  to  be  scientific  must  be,  in  the  widest 
sense  of  the  word,  empirical.  In  other  words,  such  a 
study  must  proceed  by  the  method  of  drawing  conclu¬ 
sions  from  observed  facts  and  not  by  arm-chair  reflec¬ 
tion  divorced  from  experience.  It  is  true  that  it  will 
not  be  able  to  make  much  use  of  experiment,  that  is,  of 
the  observation  of  the  changes  which  are  produced  in 
phenomena  by  intentionally  produced  changes  in  the 
conditions  under  which  they  develop.  Experiment, 
however,  is  not  the  sole  source  of  empirical  knowledge. 
There  is  also  observation,  which  is  the  method  we  use 
when  we  are  not  free  ourselves  to  modify  the  conditions 
under  which  phenomena  are  observed  but  must  be 


10 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


content  with  studying  them  in  such  varying  situations 
as  are  provided  for  us.  Although  wTe  cannot  experiment 
in  the  psychology  of  religion  as  we  can  when  we  are 
studying  the  psychology  of  sensation,  we  are  not  ex¬ 
empted  from  the  duty  of  being  able  to  justify  our 
conclusions  by  an  appeal  to  experience. 

There  seem  to  be  three  main  sources  from  which  data 
may  be  drawn  for  a  psychological  study  of  religion. 
These  are :  first,  what  can  be  discovered  by  questioning 
living  persons;  secondly,  what  can  be  discovered  by 
examining  ourselves;  and  thirdly,  the  information 
which  can  be  drawn  from  the  autobiographies  and  other 
writings  of  religious  persons.  Of  these,  the  third  is  the 
evidence  on  which  the  present  work  mostly  relies,  while 
the  first  and  second  are  used  only  subordinately. 

The  most  highly  systematised  method  of  obtaining 
evidence  from  living  persons  is  by  means  of  the  ques¬ 
tionnaire.  This  is  a  series  of  questions  issued  to  a  large 
number  of  persons.  It  is  peculiarly  well  adapted  to 
obtain  statistical  information  about  what  people  be¬ 
lieve.  It  has  obvious  limitations  which  are  illustrated 
by  the  use  made  of  it  by  Starbuck  to  obtain  informa¬ 
tion  about  conversion.1  It  is  difficult  not  to  feel  that 
Starbuck’s  conclusions  about  the  part  played  by  emo¬ 
tion,  intellect,  etc.,  in  conversions,  from  the  number  of 
people  who  have  mentioned  these  in  their  reply,  are  of 
extremely  doubtful  value.  Leuba  used  the  question¬ 
naire  to  determine  the  percentage  of  scientific  workers 
of  different  kinds  who  believed  in  God  and  in  immortal¬ 
ity.  This  is  the  kind  of  problem  for  the  elucidation  of 
which  the  questionnaire  seems  to  be  well  adapted.  It 
is  a  pity  that  Professor  Leuba  was  not  content  with 
this,  but  tried  to  draw  from  his  results  conclusions 

*New  York,  1903. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


11 


about  the  existence  of  God  and  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  problems  upon  which  a  questionnaire,  even  if 
issued  to  leading  scientific  workers,  is  altogether  in¬ 
capable  of  throwing  any  light. 

While  I  am  not  in  the  present  book  making  explicit 
use  of  self-analysis  as  data  for  my  enquiry,  it  can  never 
be  altogether  absent.  The  scheme  of  one’s  classifica¬ 
tion  must  always  be  provided  in  part  from  one’s  own 
religious  development.  Both  in  this  and  the  previous 
kind  of  data,  it  is  important  to  remember  that  one  must 
not  be  content  with  mere  introspection.  The  study  of 
behaviour  gives  results  which  must  supplement  the 
data  of  introspection,  and  the  psychoanalytic  method 
of  investigating  the  mind  also  makes  a  contribution  to 
our  knowledge.  An  obvious  criticism  of  the  question¬ 
naire  is  that  its  replies  are  mere  introspections  whose 
value  w7e  could  only  judge  if  wre  could  have  also  the 
testimony  of  the  friends  and  relatives  of  the  subjects. 

One  of  the  advantages  of  the  analysis  of  written 
material  as  an  empirical  basis,  is  that  in  this  we  are 
not  confined  to  the  introspections  of  our  subjects. 
Contemporary  biographies  throw  light  on  the  beha¬ 
viour  of  the  religious  person  when  this  is  important  for 
the  understanding  of  his  introspections.  We  can  also 
observe  the  influence  of  his  personal  history  and  of  his 
environment  on  his  religious  development.  Such  infor¬ 
mation  is  generally  not  given  at  all  in  a  questionnaire. 
At  the  same  time,  wThen  he  talks  wddely  and  freely  on  a 
variety  of  subjects,  he  often  enables  us  to  guess  at  the 
unconscious  springs  of  his  thought  in  a  wTay  which  is 
not  intended  by  himself.  This  also  is  an  advantage 
foregone  by  the  users  of  the  questionnaire  method. 

I  intend  to  use  as  material  for  this  book  the  more 
developed  religions  rather  than  the  primitive  ones, 


12 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


because  our  own  mental  processes  and  those  of  the 
people  with  whom  we  live  or  whose  books  we  read,  are 
open  to  our  observation  in  a  way  that  is  impossible  for 
the  mental  processes  of  primitive  man.  For  the  same 
reason  I  propose  to  draw  my  illustrations  principally 
from  the  religion  with  which  we  are  most  familiar — 
Christianity. 

The  first  problem  which  it  is  necessary  to  discuss  is 
perhaps  most  simply  to  be  expressed  as  follows:  what 
are  the  conscious  roots  of  the  belief  in  God  as  it  is  found 
in  the  mind  of  a  believer  in  one  of  the  higher  religions? 
We  find  that  this  question  has  been  answered  in  many 
different  ways.  St  Anselm  thought  that  he  could  prove 
the  existence  of  God  by  an  a  priori  process  of  reasoning 
quite  apart  from  experience  of  any  kind.  Some  persons 
say  that  they  feel  a  certainty  of  His  existence  which 
they  cannot  doubt  although  they  confess  that  they  are 
not  able  to  prove  it.  Others  rest  their  belief  on  the 
authority  of  the  Church  or  of  the  Bible.  Others  are 
convinced  of  the  reality  of  the  demands  of  morality, 
and  can  find  no  sufficient  sanction  for  them  except  in 
the  conception  of  a  supreme  lawgiver.  Others  are 
entranced  by  the  beauty  of  Nature,  and  find  in  this  the 
signature  of  a  loving  creator. 

We  need  not  dispute  about  which  of  these  is  the  true 
method  of  approach,  but  recognise  in  each  of  them  one 
element  which  goes  to  the  building  up  of  that  complex 
mental  product  we  call  religion.  If  we  try  to  classify 
those  elements  which  help  to  produce  belief  in  God  we 
find  that  they  fall  under  three  main  headings. 

These  are: 

( 1 )  The  influence  of  tradition,  childhood  teaching,  etc. 

(2)  Various  experiences  of  the  individual  wdffch  are 
harmonised  by  the  beliefs  which  he  has  been  taught. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION  13 

(3)  Processes  of  reasoning  by  which  he  subsequently 
justifies  them. 

If  we  wish  to  name  these  three  roots  of  religious 
belief,  we  may  call  them  the  traditional,  the  experi¬ 
ential,  and  the  rational  element  respectively. 

The  experiences  which  have  been  included  in  the 
experiential  root  are  so  varied  that  we  may  conven¬ 
iently  further  classify  them  as  follows : 

(а)  The  experience  of  beauty,  harmony  and  benefi¬ 
cence  in  the  external  world;  in  conflict  with  ugliness, 
disorder  and  malevolence. 

(б)  The  moral  conflict,  i.e.,  the  conflict  in  the  indi¬ 
vidual's  own  mind  between  the  impulses  he  recognises 
as  evil  and  those  he  believes  to  be  good. 

(c)  The  inner  emotional  experiences  connected  with 
the  idea  of  God. 

These  I  propose  to  call  the  natural,  the  moral  and 
the  affective  element. 

This  gives  five  main  roots  of  religious  belief  which 
will  be  discussed  in  more  detail  during  the  course  of 
the  next  five  chapters.  They  can  be  summarised  in  the 
following  form : 

(1)  The  influence  of  tradition,  etc.  (the  traditional 
element). 

(2)  Experiences  harmonised  by  religious  belief. 

(a)  Beauty,  harmony  and  beneficence  in  the  out¬ 
side  world  (the  natural  element). 

(b)  The  moral  conflict  (the  moral  element). 

(c)  Emotional  experience  (the  affective  element). 

(3)  Processes  of  reasoning  (the  rational  element).  y 

The  above  classification  will  help  us  to  treat  the 

problem  we  are  discussing  in  an  orderly  manner.  We 
must,  however,  be  on  our  guard  against  the  pitfalls 
which  are  open  to  us  if  we  attach  too  much  importance 


u 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


to  our  own  classifications.  There  is  no  shallower 
method  in  psychology  than  that  of  those  who  arrange 
types  in  a  neatly  numbered  series  and  then  proceed  to 
fit  the  infinite  varieties  of  human  life  into  their  rigidly 
conceived  framework.  We  should  be  making  an  evil 
use  of  the  analysis  just  performed  if  we  thought  it 
justified  us  in  allocating  all  the  human  beings  of  our 
acquaintance  to  the  traditional,  the  rational,  or  to  one 
of  the  three  sub-varieties  of  the  experiential  type.  We 
shall  indeed  find  that  in  some  forms  of  religion  the 
contribution  of  one  of  these  roots  is  exaggerated  at  the 
expense  of  others;  and  I  shall  speak  of  such  forms  of 
religion  (and  of  such  forms  only)  as  types — as  the 
traditional  type  when  it  is  the  traditional  element 
which  is  exaggerated,  and  so  on.  These,  however,  are 
exceptional  growths,  often  in  response  to  the  require¬ 
ments  of  a  theory.  If,  for  example,  a  man  makes  up 
his  mind  in  his  study  that  the  sole  valid  function  of 
religion  is  that  of  dealing  with  the  moral  conflict,  we 
need  not  be  surprised  to  find  that  he  develops  a  religion 
of  the  moral  type ,  in  which  the  moral  element  attains 
unusual  prominence.  When  dealing  later  with  each  of 
these  elements  in  turn,  we  shall  notice  the  type  of  re¬ 
ligion  which  results  from  their  exaggeration.  The  more 
usual  development  of  religion,  however,  wfill  be  from 
a  variety  of  roots  and  an  exclusive  emphasis  on  one 
may  be  taken  as  a  sign  of  an  abnormal  development. 

At  the  same  time,  we  must  remember  that  we  have 
so  far  established  no  criterion  of  normality  in  religion. 
When  we  speak  of  a  religious  type  having  been  formed 
by  the  exaggeration  of  one  element  in  the  mental 
groundwork  of  religion,  we  can  only  mean  that  it  is 
exaggerated  as  compared  with  the  religion  we  most 
commonly  find.  We  have  no  right  to  mean  that  it  is 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


15 


exaggerated  as  compared  with  religion  as  it  ought  to  be. 
It  is  possible,  for  example,  that  the  purest  and  most 
highly  developed  religion  would  be  what  we  have  called 
religion  oj  the  moral  type.  I  do  not  believe  that  this  is 
the  case,  for  reasons  which  I  shall  discuss  in  a  later 
chapter.  So  many  people,  however,  do  believe  it  that 
it  would  be  dishonest  for  me  to  use  language  which 
prejudged  the  question  in  my  own  favour,  by  describ¬ 
ing  religion  of  the  ordinary  kind  as  normal  and  speak¬ 
ing  of  this  as  an  exaggeration  with  an  implied  condem¬ 
nation  of  it. 

Just  as  such  types  of  religion  result  from  a  strong 
emphasis  in  practice  on  one  of  these  roots  and  com¬ 
parative  neglect  of  the  others,  so  dogmatic  schools  in 
the  philosophy  or  psychology  of  religion  result  from  a 
similar  over-emphasis  in  theory.  An  example  of  this 
may  be  found  in  a  work  on  the  psychology  of  religion, 
in  which  the  author  makes  it  clear  in  his  preface  that  he 
considered  that  the  only  element  belonging  properly 
to  religion  was  the  moral  element.1  Philosophers  of 
religion  have  often  occupied  themselves  exclusively 
with  the  arguments  for  the  existence  of  God,  and  sup¬ 
posed  that  this  was  the  whole  foundation  of  religion. 
Their  influence  on  the  religious  life  of  their  times  has 
been  small,  because  what  they  w^ere  arguing  about 
played  only  a  small  part  in  determining  whether  people 
believed  or  disbelieved  in  God.  When  a  philosopher 
supposed  that  he  had  successfully  refuted  all  the  argu¬ 
ments  for  the  existence  of  God  which  had  so  far  been 
brought  forward,  there  was  no  general  abandonment  of 
religious  faith.  At  most,  he  had  destroyed  only  one  of 
the  elements  which  determine  religious  belief;  the 
others  remained  as  firm  as  before. 

1  The  Psychology  of  Religion,  by  Coe  (Chicago,  1916). 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  TRADITIONAL  ELEMENT  IN 
RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

At  the  end  of  the  last  chapter,  we  had  distinguished 
five  main  conscious  roots  of  the  belief  in  God.  We  are 
now  going  to  discuss  at  greater  length  the  first  of  these : 
the  influence  of  such  factors  as  childhood  teaching,  of 
tradition.  This  is  an  element  which  we  always  tend  to 
regard  as  playing  a  much  smaller  part  in  the  formation 
of  our  own  beliefs  than  modern  psychologists  insist 
that  in  fact  it  does.  Theorists’  discussions  of  religious 
experience  too  often  make  the  tacit  assumption  that 
the  problem  of  the  psychology  of  religion  is  to  discover 
what  kind  of  religion  a  man  would  develop  from  his 
own  inner  experience  if  he  had  been  entirely  cut  off 
from  his  fellow  men  from  infancy  by  being  abandoned 
on  a  desert  island.  The  problem  in  real  life  is  not  so 
simple.  We  are  in  fact  surrounded  by  other  people  and 
are  receiving  from  them  influences  far  greater  than  we 
are  generally  willing  to  acknowledge  to  ourselves. 

These  do  not  come  only  from  childhood  teaching  and 
from  direct  teaching  in  later  life.  Even  what  we  regard 
as  our  own  inner  experiences,  products  of  our  self- 
determined  mental  life,  are  moulded  very  much  by  our 
social  environment.  Members  of  a  society  all  tend  to 
thrill  with  the  same  emotions  under  the  same  circum¬ 
stances.  Few  religious  phenomena  are  more  uniform 
than  the  adolescent  conversions  of  members  of  a 
religious  body  in  which  adolescent  conversion  is  the 

16 


THE  TRADITIONAL  ELEMENT 


17 


correct  thing.  We  find  that  all  the  members  of  such  a 
community  go  through  a  long  series  of  emotional  ex¬ 
periences  which  they  describe  in  almost  exactly  the 
same  terms.  Yet  when  we  turn  to  another  community 
which  has  not  this  tradition  of  adolescent  conversions, 
these  experiences  are  not  found.  They  are,  in  the 
main,  merely  products  of  the  conventions  of  the  com¬ 
munity  in  which  they  w^ere  produced,  and  not  (as  we 
might  easily  have  supposed)  evidences  of  a  deep-seated 
uniformity  in  human  nature. 

Such  a  fact  as  this  should  warn  us  once  again  of  the 
artificiality  of  the  classification  with  which  we  started. 
The  influence  of  our  fellow  men  is  not  confined  to  the 
traditional  element  in  religious  belief,  it  also  influences 
the  element  we  have  called  the  affective  element. 
However  useful  we  may  find  it  to  be  for  convenience  in 
description,  the  classification  wTould  lead  us  astray  if 
we  attempted  to  interpret  it  too  rigidly. 

The  method  by  which  our  beliefs  are  influenced  by 
other  people  is  not,  on  the  whole,  reasoned  demonstra¬ 
tion.  The  child  does  not  have  the  existence  of  God 
proved  to  it  in  its  religious  lessons.  It  is  still  true  in 
later  life  that  the  simple  affirmation  of  religious  doc¬ 
trines  by  a  person  for  whom  we  have  respect,  or  the 
mere  fact  of  the  holding  of  such  doctrines  by  the  per¬ 
sons  amongst  whom  we  live,  may  have  an  authority 
over  us  compared  with  which  the  influence  of  the  most 
convincing  chain  of  reasoning  is  negligible.  The 
method  by  which  beliefs  are  transmitted  to  us  other¬ 
wise  than  by  reasoned  demonstration  is  by  suggestion, 
so  for  the  understanding  of  this  root  of  religious  belief, 
it  is  necessary  that  we  should  study  the  psychology  of 
suggestion. 

We  may  start  with  a  description  of  suggestion  in  an 


18 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


extreme  form.  This  was  the  earliest  kind  to  be  studied 
by  psychologists.  If  a  hypnotiser  shows  a  hypnotised 
subject  a  plain  pack  of  cards,  and  tells  him  that  there  is 
a  photograph  of  his  brother  on  one  of  them,  he  may 
succeed  in  making  the  subject  see  the  photograph  there, 
and  continue  to  see  that  card  as  a  photograph  of  his 
brother  until  the  suggestion  is  removed.  If  the  hypno¬ 
tiser  tells  him  that  he  is  an  animal  of  some  kind,  he 
may  begin  to  behave  as  if  he  were  that  animal.  If  he  is 
told  that  in  five  minutes  he  will  jump  on  his  hat  or 
perform  some  other  ridiculous  action,  he  often  does  so 
at  the  stated  time ;  even  though  in  the  interval,  he  may 
have  come  out  of  the  hypnotic  state  and  be  engaged  in 
doing  something  else,  quite  unconscious  of  the  com¬ 
mand  he  has  received.  These  commands  are  called 
suggestions.  In  each  case  it  will  be  noticed  that  an 
idea  suggested  by  the  hypnotiser  has  been  realised  by 
the  subject  as  a  perception,  a  belief,  or  an  action. 

In  ordinary  life  we  do  not  meet  with  such  striking 
phenomena  as  these.  We  cannot,  for  example,  success¬ 
fully  suggest  to  a  normal  person  that  he  shall  have  a 
visual  hallucination.  At  the  same  time,  we  do  con¬ 
stantly  find  phenomena  which  differ  from  these  only  in 
degree.  We  find  that  ideas  presented  to  us  by  other 
persons  in  the  right  way,  frequently  ripen  in  our  minds 
until  they  result  in  an  action  or  change  of  belief.  A 
statement  made  in  a  confident  manner  by  another 
person  is  often  accepted  by  us  without  any  rational 
ground  for  believing  in  its  truth  or  in  the  credibility  of 
the  person  making  it.  It  is  usual,  at  the  present  time, 
to  extend  the  meaning  of  the  word  suggestion  to  in¬ 
clude  such  cases.  We  may  then  define  suggestion  as 
a  process  of  communication  resulting  in  the  acceptance 
and  realisation  of  a  communicated  idea  in  the  absence 


THE  TRADITIONAL  ELEMENT 


19 


of  adequate  grounds  for  its  acceptance.  This  is  not 
quite  the  same  as  Dr  McDougall’s  definition  given  in 
his  Social  Psychology,  since  he  makes  suggestion  result 
in  the  acceptance  with  conviction  of  a  communicated 
proposition.  This  does  not  include  the  important  cases 
of  suggestion  in  which  what  is  communicated  is  not  a 
proposition  but  a  feeling,  state,  or  a  course  of  action. 

We  will  consider  a  typical  case  of  suggestion  in 
everyday  life.  We  want  to  buy  something  in  a  shop. 
The  salesman  asks  a  price  which  we  know  is  much  in 
excess  of  the  article's  true  value.  We  question  his 
price.  He  insists  in  a  firm,  confident  manner  that  not 
only  is  he  not  overcharging  us,  but  that  he  is  asking 
less  than  the  true  value  of  the  article  and  that  he  will 
lose  heavily  on  the  sale.  He  continues  to  repeat  this, 
and  in  time  it  has  happened  to  most  of  us  that  we  have 
been  talked  over — the  barrier  put  up  by  our  intellects 
has  been  broken,  the  suggestion  has  taken  effect,  and 
we  have  bought  the  article.  Later,  when  we  have  been 
out  of  reach  of  the  salesman's  suggestions,  we  have 
realised  (what  we  knew  at  first)  that  we  have  paid  far 
more  than  our  purchase  was  worth,  and  that  we  have 
been  victims  of  a  suggestion.  It  is  clear  that  we  have 
not  argued  that  the  salesman  is  probably  telling  the 
truth.  On  the  contrarv,  we  know  that  it  is  in  his 
interest  to  be  lying.  His  remark  that  he  will  lose  on 
the  sale  is  patently  untrue.  We  have  accepted  his 
statement  by  no  rational  process,  but  by  the  process  of 
suggestion — the  acceptance  and  realisation  by  our 
minds  of  a  suggested  course  of  action  simply  because  it 
has  been  proposed  to  us  a  sufficient  number  of  times  in 
a  sufficiently  confident  manner.  Continued  repetition 
and  confidence  in  the  manner  of  repeating  are,  in  fact, 
the  conditions  of  presenting  a  suggestion  which  most 


20 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


favour  its  success.  There  was  a  profound  psychologi¬ 
cal  truth  in  the  logically  inadmissible  claim  of  the 
Bellman  in  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark  that  what  he 
said  three  times  was  true. 

We  find  that  there  are  wide  differences  in  the  readi¬ 
ness  with  which  suggestions  are  accepted  by  different 
persons  and  by  the  same  person  under  different  circum¬ 
stances.  These  are  called  differences  in  suggestibility. 
Suggestibility  varies  with  age  and  sex;  children  are 
more  suggestible  than  grown  persons,  and  women  are 
more  suggestible  than  men.  Hysteria  is  accompanied 
by  a  marked  increase  in  suggestibility;  while  persons 
suffering  from  certain  forms  of  insanity  and  from 
amentia  (or  idiocy)  are  very  unsuggestible. 

The  state  of  half-waking  which  immediately  pre¬ 
cedes  or  follows  sleep  is  one  in  which  suggestibility  is 
very  high.  A  similar  condition  can  be  induced  arti¬ 
ficially,  and  is  called  light  hypnosis  or  the  hypnoidal 
state.  Deep  hypnosis  is  a  state  resembling  sleep.  Both 
of  these  are  conditions  of  high  suggestibility.  Hypno¬ 
sis  can  be  induced  by  fixing  the  eyes  on  a  bright  point, 
such  as  the  flame  of  a  candle  or  the  bright  reflections 
in  a  crystal  standing  on  a  dark  ground,  by  listening  to 
a  continuous  or  rhythmically  varying  sound,  such  as 
the  ticking  of  a  clock  or  the  sound  of  waves  breaking 
on  the  sea-shore,  or  by  rhythmical  passes  performed  by 
someone  else  before  the  subject’s  face  and  body.  It  can 
also  be  produced  simply  by  suggestion  in  a  sufficiently 
suggestible  subject.  The  operator  has  only  to  order 
such  a  subject  to  sleep,  and  he  immediately  falls  into 
the  hypnotic  sleep. 

The  characteristics  of  a  slight  degree  of  hypnosis  may 
be  tested  without  difficulty  by  anyone.  Fix  your  eyes 
on  a  bright  spot  of  light,  preferably  on  a  dark  back- 


THE  TRADITIONAL  ELEMENT 


21 


ground.  As  you  keep  your  eyes  fixed,  you  find  that  the 
surrounding  objects  become  misty  and  dark.  Your 
mind  seems  to  become  empty,  and  you  grow  more  and 
more  drowsy.  Your  eyelids  wfish  to  close  and  you  may 
allow  them  to  do  so.  You  are  now  in  the  condition  of 
light  hypnosis.  The  experiment  will  succeed  best  if 
you  are  alone  and  free  from  external  distractions. 

The  psychological  characteristics  of  the  hypnotic 
state  will  be  dealt  with  in  greater  detail  in  a  later  chap¬ 
ter,  when  wTe  discuss  different  forms  of  what  is  called 
mental  prayer.  The  only  character  which  is  of  im¬ 
portance  to  us  at  present  is  that  it  is  a  state  of  increased 
suggestibility.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  hypnosis  finds 
its  use  in  psychiatry.  It  was  at  one  time  usual,  when  a 
doctor  wished  to  treat  a  patient  by  suggestion,  to  put 
him  into  the  hypnotic  trance;  more  usually  at  the 
present  time  he  is  put  only  into  the  state  of  light 
hypnosis.  In  either  case,  the  object  is  to  increase  the 
patient’s  suggestibility  so  that  the  curative  suggestions 
of  the  doctor  may  more  readily  take  effect. 

Suggestibility  is  heightened  by  practice.  A  person 
who  has  been  put  frequently  into  the  hypnotic  state 
becomes  increasingly  suggestible.  Dr  Rivers  has 
pointed  out,  for  example,  that  the  object  of  military 
drill  is  to  heighten  the  suggestibility  of  the  private 
soldiers  so  that  they  may  respond  immediately  and 
unquestioningly  to  the  commands  of  their  officers.1 

The  success  of  a  suggestion  also  depends  on  how  far 
it  conflicts  with  the  mental  organisation  of  the  person 
receiving  it — with  his  principles,  prejudices,  etc.  It 
will  be  received  with  difficulty  if  he  has  a  well-organised 
system  of  belief  or  of  principles  of  conduct  with  which 
it  conflicts.  It  will  be  received  most  readily  if  there  is 

1  Appendix  to  Instinct  and  the  Unconscious,  Cambridge,  1921. 


22 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


previously  existing  in  his  mind  a  disposition  to  accept 
it.  It  is  not  true  (although  it  is  often  stated)  that, 
even  under  hypnosis,  a  man  can  never  be  made  to  do 
anything  he  believes  to  be  morally  wrong.  His  accept¬ 
ance  of  a  suggestion  depends  also  on  other  factors,  very 
largely  on  how  far  he  believes  he  will  be  absolutely 
passive  in  the  hands  of  the  operator.  Experiment  has 
shown  that  it  is  sometimes  possible  successfully  to 
suggest  lines  of  conduct  completely  at  variance  with 
the  moral  principles  of  the  subject,  although  more 
usually  they  are  accepted  with  difficulty  or  not  at  all. 

The  suggestibility  of  the  same  subject  also  varies 
with  the  operator.  Anything  that  increases  the  pres¬ 
tige  of  the  operator  increases  the  suggestibility  of  the 
subject  to  him.  Love,  and  to  a  less  extent  fear,  of  the 
operator  will  increase  the  suggestibility  of  the  subject. 
An  attitude  of  dependence  and  heightened  suggestibil¬ 
ity  in  an  extreme  form,  showing  some  of  the  character¬ 
istics  of  normal  love,  has  recently  been  distinguished 
by  the  psychoanalysts  under  the  name  of  positive 
transference.  Transference  may  result  from  hypnotic 
treatment,  and  its  occurrence  is  one  objection  to  that 
treatment  in  mental  therapy.  It  is  also  found  in  treat¬ 
ment  by  psychoanalysis,  but  the  psychoanalysts  claim 
that  they  have  improved  on  the  practice  of  hypnotism 
because  they  use  the  transference  in  the  cure  of  their 
patients  and  are  able  to  get  rid  of  it  afterwards.  It 
appears  that  in  transference  we  meet  with  a  regression 
to  the  childish  attitude  of  dependence  on  the  parent, 
but  with  some  other  person  substituted  for  the  parent, 
and  with  the  relationship  complicated  by  a  tendency  to 
the  emotional  attitude  proper  to  a  grown  person. 

Contrasuggestion  is  the  name  given  to  the  process 
opposite  to  suggestion.  In  this,  the  tendency  is  to 


THE  TRADITIONAL  ELEMENT 


23 


reject  a  proposition  advanced  by  another  person. 
There  are  people  to  whom  it  is  sufficient  to  remark  that 
it  is  a  fine  day,  to  provoke  the  response  that  it  is  a 
most  unpleasant  day,  even  though  they  may  have  had 
no  thoughts  about  the  weather  at  all  until  the  remark 
was  made.  Persons  to  whom  the  attitude  of  contra- 
suggestion  has  become  habitual  are  what  we  call 
cranks.  It  has  been  suggested  by  Dr  Prideaux  1  that 
this  is  a  case  of  what  is  called  overcompensation  for  a 
tendency  to  accept  suggestions  too  readily. 

We  have  not,  however,  exhausted  the  subject  of 
suggestion  when  we  have  described  it  as  a  consciously 
produced  action  of  the  mind  of  a  single  person  on  that 
of  another.  There  is  a  tendency  amongst  modern 
psychologists — e.g.  Dr  Rivers  in  Instinct  and  the  Un¬ 
conscious  and  Mr  Trotter  in  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in 
Peace  and  War — to  emphasise  the  importance  of  what 
they  call  herd-suggestion,  i.e.  the  suggestions  which  a 
member  of  a  society  is  constantly  receiving  from  the 
rest  of  the  same  society.  It  determines  the  close  simi¬ 
larity  in  thought  and  belief  of  different  members  of  a 
group.  It  supplies  the  sanction  behind  the  conven¬ 
tional  code  of  morality.  To  it  are  due  the  waves  of 
feeling  which  pass  over  a  whole  country,  such  as  the 
anger  which  is  felt  when  a  country  is  attacked  or 
insulted.  The  greater  part  of  the  very  large  mass  of 
opinions  which  a  man  has  not  thought  out  for  himself, 
he  owes  to  the  influence  of  herd-suggestion.  Even  in 
the  opinions  which  he  believes  he  has  thought  out,  he 
is  not  free  from  its  effects.  His  methods  of  thought, 
the  things  he  has  assumed  as  axiomatic,  are  all  more  or 
less  determined  for  him  by  the  society  in  which  he  finds 

^‘Suggestion  and  Suggestibility,”  by  E.  Prideaux.  The  British 
Journal  oj  Psychology,  1919-20. 


24 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


himself.  Thus  herd-suggestion  is  a  powerful  force 
influencing  the  formation  of  belief  to  an  extent  greater 
than  most  people  are  willing  to  admit. 

There  is  a  third  variety  of  suggestion  called  auto¬ 
suggestion,  in  which  the  idea  suggested  is  originated 
by  the  subject  himself.  I  propose  to  reserve  the  dis¬ 
cussion  of  this  for  a  future  chapter. 

The  bearing  of  what  has  been  said  about  suggestion 
and  hypnosis  on  the  teaching  of  religion  is  very  great. 
Suggestion  clearly  plays  a  very  large  part  in  religious 
teaching.  I  am  convinced  too  that  the  unintended 
production  of  the  hypnoidal  state  is  present  in  religious 
services  to  a  much  greater  extent  than  is  ordinarily 
recognised  by  writers  on  the  psychology  of  religion. 
Let  us  consider  the  various  methods  of  increasing  sug¬ 
gestibility  and  see  how  far  they  are  found  in  religion. 
The  prestige  of  the  preacher  is  increased  by  the  wear¬ 
ing  of  distinctive  clothes.  The  suggestibility  of  the 
hearer  is  increased  by  finding  himself  one  of  a  crowd. 
This  effect  is  heightened  in  such  a  service  as  that  of  the 
Salvation  Army  by  the  ejaculations  with  which  the 
congregation  show  their  sympathy  with  what  is  being 
said  by  the  preacher.  The  following  things  may  be 
present  which  are  liable  to  induce  the  hypnoidal  state: 
a  monotonous  voice  in  the  reading  of  the  service,  the 
rhythmical  sound  of  the  music,  and  the  points  of  light 
produced  by  lighted  candles.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  so  far 
misunderstood  as  to  be  supposed  to  mean  that  these 
things  are  deliberately  introduced  into  services  in  order 
to  induce  the  hypnoidal  state.  But  that  is  their  ten¬ 
dency  in  fact,  and  it  is  possible  that  it  is  to  this  ten¬ 
dency  that  they  owe  their  value  as  adjuncts  to  the 
religious  service. 

I  was  recently  present  at  a  Salvation  Army  service 


THE  TRADITIONAL  ELEMENT 


25 


which  provides  a  very  fine  example  of  the  unwitting 
use  of  suggestion,  and  of  the  use  of  the  hypnoidal  con¬ 
dition  in  order  to  increase  suggestibility.  It  took  place 
in  a  theatre.  At  the  end  of  the  service,  people  were 
invited  to  come  up  to  the  mercy  seat  on  the  stage  in 
order  to  seek  consecration.  On  the  stage,  one  of  the 
leaders  was  repeating  in  confident  and  slightly  monot¬ 
onous  tones:  “Jesus  calls  you.  Come.  Come.  Come 
now.  Come.  Come  now.  .  .  The  congregation 
were  asked  to  bow  their  heads  and  to  sing  with  their 
eyes  closed.  The  closed  eyes,  the  monotonous  singing, 
and  the  repetition  of  the  word  “Come”  on  the  stage,  all 
tended  to  produce  in  the  audience  a  state  approaching 
the  hypnoidal.  The  same  verse  was  sung  over  and  over 
again  by  the  congregation,  and  it  too  contained  the 
same  suggestion  as  was  being  urged  from  the  stage — it 
contained  some  such  wTorcls  as  I  give  myself  to  Jesus. 
The  effect  of  this  suggestion  was  a  powerful  one,  and 
it  succeeded  in  breaking  down  the  resistance  of  several 
of  the  congregation  to  the  act  of  making  a  public  decla¬ 
ration  by  stepping  on  to  the  stage. 

A  good  deal  of  nonsense  is  talked  by  people  who  seem 
to  think  that  it  is  a  reproach  peculiar  to  the  teaching  of 
religion  that  it  is  very  largely  a  non-rational  process — 
suggestion  under  conditions  of  heightened  suggestibil¬ 
ity.  That  is  true  of  most  teaching.  Even  in  rational 
demonstration,  it  seems  probable  that  the  conviction 
with  wThich  a  proposition  is  received  owes  a  great  deal 
to  suggestion  over  and  above  the  influence  of  the  per¬ 
ceived  rigidity  of  its  proof.  Perhaps  the  conditions  of 
teaching  furthest  removed  from  those  of  the  pulpit  are 
to  be  found  in  the  university  class-room,  where  one 
wishes  to  train  the  students  to  think  for  themselves, 
and  the  lecturer  endeavours  not  to  present  conclusions 


26 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


but  to  state  alternatives  and  to  give  due  weight  to 
facts  on  both  sides.  But  even  here,  it  will  be  found 
that  so  far  as  he  is  communicating  his  opinions  to  his 
class,  he  is  using  suggestion.  He  is  not  generally  en¬ 
gaged  in  proving  his  opinions,  but  in  affirming  them  in 
a  confident  tone.  If  he  thinks  that  the  class  wdil  have 
difficulty  in  accepting  what  he  says,  he  does  not  multi¬ 
ply  proofs ;  he  affirms  it  again  in  a  more  confident  tone. 
It  is  true  that  his  class  is  not  in  a  state  of  mind  even 
approaching  the  hypnoidal.  On  the  contrary  he  hopes 
that  their  minds  are  alert  and  active.  But  then  w^e 
must  notice  that  his  aim  is  very  different  from  that  of 
the  religious  teacher.  The  lecturer  wants  his  class  to 
accept  only  so  much  of  what  he  is  saying  that  they  will 
become  interested  in  his  subject,  if  possible  along  the 
lines  he  is  indicating.  The  religious  teacher  wishes  his 
congregation  to  follow-  him  further  than  that.  He 
rightly  feels  that  the  attitude  of  open-mindedness,  and 
critical  agnosticism,  which  is  the  right  one  to  adopt 
towards  a  scientific  theory,  has  litftle  value  when  ap¬ 
plied  to  the  problem  of  the  being  of  God,  with  all  its 
implications  for  devotional  and  moral  practice.  So 
far,  however,  as  the  scientific  lecturer  does  wish  his 
audience  to  accept  what  he  says,  he  uses  on  the 
whole  the  same  method  as  the  religious  teacher — sug¬ 
gestion. 

The  use  of  suggestion  is  a  normal  process  in  teaching, 
but  it  has  its  dangers.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  clear  that 
the  more  a  teacher  depends  on  suggestion  and  the  less 
he  utilises  the  reasoning  power  of  his  followers,  the 
graver  is  his  moral  responsibility  for  seeing  that  what 
he  teaches  is  true.  Secondly,  there  is  a  danger  of 
attaching  too  high  a  valuation  to  an  unreasoning  ac¬ 
ceptance  of  what  is  taught.  This  encourages  an  atti- 


THE  TRADITIONAL  ELEMENT 


27 


tude  of  suggestibility  and  dependence,  with  consequent 
weakening  of  the  subject’s  character.  Such  a  passively 
accepted  religion,  which  has  no  grounding  in  the  expe¬ 
rience  of  the  worshippers  and  has  not  won  the  alle¬ 
giance  of  their  reasoning  powers,  tends  to  be  super¬ 
ficial.  We  might  fairly  describe  such  a  religion  as  of 
the  traditional  type.  There  are,  thirdly,  dangers  con¬ 
nected  with  transference  to  the  minister.  Those  of  my 
readers  who  have  understood  what  I  said  about  trans¬ 
ference  earlier  in  this  chapter  will  have  no  difficulty  in 
calling  to  mind  a  multitude  of  cases  of  transference  to 
religious  teachers  within  their  own  experience.  The 
curate,  for  example,  who  is  embarrassed  by  the  number 
of  unnecessary  presents  he  receives  from  members  of 
his  congregation  is  a  victim  of  transference.  The  wise 
minister  of  religion,  of  course,  knows  what  to  do  with 
it.  Like  the  psychoanalyst,  he  uses  it  for  the  strength¬ 
ening  of  the  subject’s  autonomy  of  character,  and  thus 
makes  it  destroy  itself.  But  unhappily,  the  weakness, 
vanity,  or  folly  of  the  minister  can  too  easily  make  such 
a  transference  end  in  disaster. 

The  danger  of  an  overvaluation  of  the  attitude  of 
passive  acceptance  of  authority,  and  the  consequent 
production  of  religion  of  the  traditional  type,  is  a  very 
real  one.  A  church  which,  in  practice,  says  to  the  vast 
majority  of  its  worshippers:  “Do  not  think,  do  not 
bother  about  your  feelings,  simply  believe  and  obey ;  in 
that  is  the  highest  merit,”  is  justly  suspected  by  those 
who  feel  their  autonomy  of  character  to  be  a  precious 
thing. 

A  dreadful  example  of  the  exaltation  of  this  attitude 
in  religion  comes  from  a  little  book  called  Stories  of 
Grace.  Obviously,  the  author  of  the  book  tells  it  as  a 
very  edifying  story.  It  is  as  follows: 


28 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


At  the  conclusion  of  a  sermon  by  the  revivalist,  Mr 
Brownlow  North,  a  young  man  asked  to  see  him. 
Addressing  Mr  North,  he  said,  “I  have  heard  your  ser¬ 
mon,  sir,  and  I  have  heard  you  preach  often  now,  and 
I  neither  care  for  you  nor  your  preaching,  unless  you 
can  tell  me,  Why  did  God  permit  sin  in  the  world?” 
“Then  I’ll  tell  you,”  the  preacher  at  once  replied.  “God 
permitted  sin  because  He  chose  to  do  so.” . . .  “Because 
He  chose  it,”  he  repeated  as  the  objector  stood  speech¬ 
less,  and  added,  “If  you  continue  to  question  and  cavil 
at  God’s  dealings  and,  vainly  puffed  up  by  your  own 
carnal  mind,  strive  to  be  wise  above  what  is  written,  I 
will  tell  you  something  more  that  God  will  choose  to 
do.  He  will  some  day  choose  to  put  you  into  hell !  It 
is  vain,  sir,  for  a  man  to  strive  with  his  Maker;  you 
cannot  resist  Him;  and  neither  your  opinion  of  His 
dealings  nor  your  blasphemous  expressions  of  them  will 
in  the  least  lessen  the  pain  of  your  everlasting  dam¬ 
nation.” 

As  a  consequence  of  this  conversation  and  by  reading 
a  chapter  of  the  Bible  recommended  by  North,  the 
young  man  became  converted,  and  a  week  later  ex¬ 
pressed  himself  thus: 

I  am  happy,  oh !  so  happy,  sir ;  and  though  the  devil 
comes  sometimes  to  tempt  me  with  my  old  thoughts 
and  to  ask  me  what  reason  I  have  to  think  God  has  for¬ 
given  me,  I  have  always  managed  to  get  him  away  by 
telling  him  that  I  do  not  want  to  judge  things  any 
longer  by  my  own  reason,  but  by  God’s  word.1 

Corresponding  to  this  danger  in  practice,  of  too  high 
a  valuation  of  the  traditional  element  in  religious 
belief,  there  is  a  danger  of  one-sidedness  in  psycho¬ 
logical  theory  resulting  from  a  too  exclusive  attention 
to  the  part  played  by  this  element  in  the  formation  of 

1  Stories  of  Grace,  by  the  Rev.  C.  S.  Isaacson,  pp.  104,  105  and  106. 


THE  TRADITIONAL  ELEMENT 


29 


belief  to  the  neglect  of  others.  In  the  discussion  of 
religious  belief  in  such  psychological  theory,  exclusive 
importance  is  attached  to  its  ancestry,  and  the  signifi¬ 
cance  both  of  its  value  for  experience  and  its  justifica¬ 
tion  by  reason  tends  to  be  forgotten.  This  danger  may 
be  illustrated  by  the  school  in  Comparative  Religions 
which  feels  that  it  has  given  a  sufficient  account  of 
pantheism  when  it  has  said  that  it  is  primitive  man’s 
fetishism  made  systematic,  and  is  satisfied  that  it  has 
disposed  for  ever  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
Atonement  by  saying  that  it  is  simply  the  survival  of 
very  primitive  ideas  about  human  sacrifice.  This  is 
clearly  an  inadequate  account  of  any  belief,  and  as¬ 
sumes  that  there  is  in  its  formation  only  one  element — 
the  traditional  element.  The  survival  of  a  belief  is 
determined  by  its  value  for  the  experience  of  the  people 
amongst  whom  it  has  survived,  and  by  the  appeal  it 
makes  to  their  intellectualising  powers.  The  idea  of 
vicarious  sacrifice  embodied  in  the  Atonement  has  sur¬ 
vived  amongst  civilised  people  because  it  has  had  a 
value  for  their  experience,  and  because  it  has  not  been 
found  by  them  to  be  intellectually  impossible.  These 
also  are  the  factors  which  have  determined  its  survival, 
and  not  merely  the  fact  that  it  has  happened  to  be 
handed  down. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  NATURAL  ELEMENT  IN 
RELIGIOUS  BELLEE 

In'  our  classification  of  the  conscious  roots  of  religious 
belief  we  distinguished  three  kinds  of  experience  which 
the  religious  man  found  to  be  harmonised  by  his  belief 
in  God.  The  first  of  these  we  described  shortly  as  the 
experience  of  the  external  world.  In  more  detail,  this 
was  the  experience  of  beneficence,  harmony  and  beauty 
in  conflict  with  their  opposites — malevolence,  disorder 
and  ugliness.  We  must  not,  of  course,  make  the  mis¬ 
take  of  supposing  that  the  man  who  finds  in  such 
experience  a  confirmation  of  his  religious  belief  formu¬ 
lates  this  mental  process  to  himself  in  the  clear-cut 
manner  in  which  we  are  doing  it  now.  When  we  try  to 
express  the  step  from  experience  of  the  external  world 
to  a  belief  in  God  in  intellectual  terms,  we  are  in 
danger  of  forgetting  that,  in  the  beginning,  it  may  not 
be  an  intellectual  process  at  all.  Everyone  will  remem¬ 
ber  the  illustration  with  which  Paley’s  Natural  Theol¬ 
ogy  starts.  He  supposes  that  a  man  has  picked  up  a 
watch  in  a  desert  place,  and,  noticing  its  differences 
from  such  a  natural  object  as  a  stone — the  subordina¬ 
tion  of  all  the  parts  to  a  common  end,  etc. — concludes 
that  it  was  made  by  a  man.  Yet  Paley  does  not  really 
wish  us  to  suppose  that  the  man  goes  through  the 
chain  of  reasoning  described  before  he  says  to  himself 
that  the  watch  is  a  product  of  human  workmanship. 
If  we  were  to  challenge  the  man’s  statement  it  is  prob- 

30 


THE  NATURAL  ELEMENT 


31 


able  that  he  would  justify  it  by  going  through  that 
chain  of  reasoning,  but  in  actual  fact  his  inference  from 
the  character  of  the  watch  to  its  human  workmanship 
probably  contained  no  steps  of  logical  thinking  at  all. 
In  the  same  wray,  a  vague  feeling  of  a  particular  kind 
about  the  world  may  be  the  raw  material  for  belief  in  a 
Creator.  Later,  when  the  belief  which  has  grown  out 
of  the  feeling  has  been  questioned,  it  begins  to  take  an 
intellectual  form.  An  experience  is  something  lived 
through  and  felt;  it  is  purely  individual  and  incommu¬ 
nicable.  Religion,  being  social,  cannot  rest  content 
with  an  incommunicable  basis;  so  its  experiences  must 
be  translated  into  words.  They  must  be  made  to  pass 
from  the  region  of  indirect  phantasy-thinking  in  which 
they  have  their  origin,  to  the  region  of  directed  com¬ 
municable  thinking  in  words.  This  translation  into 
words  is  the  intellectualisation  of  the  experience  which 
gives  birth  to  a  religious  doctrine.  The  doctrine  never 
fully  expresses  the  experience,  for  an  emotion  cannot 
be  communicated  to  another  by  the  vehicle  of  a  form 
of  words  as  satisfactorily  as  can  an  intellectual 
idea.  For  this  reason,  persons  with  the  strongest  re¬ 
ligious  feelings  often  feel  most  acutely  the  inade¬ 
quacy  of  attempts  to  put  them  into  intellectual 
form.  These  are  inclined  to  trust  their  feelings  while 
they  distrust  any  attempt  to  formulate  them  in 
dogma. 

We  may  usefully  begin  our  study  of  this  experience 
by  looking  for  descriptions  of  the  feeling  itself  before  it 
has  become  translated  into  a  positive  belief.  We  can 
find  these  plentifully  in  the  prose  and  poetry  of  all 
those  persons  vaguely  called  nature  mystics.  I  will 
first  quote  a  well-knowm  extract  from  the  chapter  on 
Solitude  in  Thoreau’s  Walden: 


32  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

In  the  midst  of  a  gentle  rain  ...  I  was  suddenly 
sensible  of  such  sweet  and  beneficent  society  in  Nature, 
in  the  very  pattering  of  the  drops,  and  in  every  sight 
and  sound  around  my  house,  an  infinite  and  unaccount¬ 
able  friendliness  all  at  once  like  an  atmosphere  sus¬ 
taining  me,  as  made  the  fancied  advantages  of  human 
neighbourhood  insignificant,  and  I  have  never  thought 
of  them  since.  Every  little  pine-needle  expanded  and 
swelled  with  sympathy  and  befriended  me.  I  was  so 
distinctly  made  aware  of  something  kindred  to  me 
even  in  scenes  which  we  are  accustomed  to  call  wild 
and  dreary  .  .  .  that  I  thought  no  place  could  ever 
be  strange  to  me  again. 

A  similar  feeling  is  expressed  by  Goethe  in  the 
second  letter  of  Werther: 

Wenn  das  liebe  Tal  um  mich  dampft  und  die  hohe 
Sonne  an  der  Oberflache  der  undurchdringlichen  Fin- 
sternis  meines  Waldes  ruht  und  nur  einzelne  Strahlen 
sich  in  das  innere  Heiligtum  stehlen,  ich  dann  im  hohen 
Grase  am  fallenden  Bache  liege  und  naher  an  der  Erde 
tausend  mannigfaltige  Graschen  mir  merkwiirdig  wer- 
den;  wenn  ich  das  Wimmeln  der  kleinen  Welt 
zwischen  Halmen,  die  unzahligen  unergriindlichen 
Gestalten  der  Wiirmchen,  der  Miickchen  naher  an 
meinem  Herzen  fiihle,  und  fiihle  die  Gegenwart  des 
Allmachtigen,  der  uns  nach  seinem  Bilde  schuf,  das 
Wehen  des  All-Liebenden,  der  uns  in  ewiger  Wonne 
schwebend  tragt  und  erhalt;  mein  Freund!  wenn’s 
dann  um  meine  Augen  dammert  und  die  Welt  um  mich 
her  und  der  Himmel  ganz  in  meiner  Seele  ruht  wie  die 
Gestalt  einer  Geliebten  1  .  .  . 

1  Goethe,  Die  Leiden  des  jungen  Werther.  “When  the  dear  valley 
is  filled  with  mist  about  me,  and  the  high  sun  rests  above  the 
impenetrable  gloom  of  my  wood,  only  single  rays  stealing  into  the 
inner  sanctuary,  when  I  lie  in  the  tall  grass  beside  the  tumbling 
brook  and  nearer  the  ground  a  thousand  varied  blades  of  grass 
attract  my  attention;  when  the  hurry  and  skurry  of  the  little  world 


THE  NATURAL  ELEMENT 


33 

This  feeling  of  awe  and  reverence  towards  Nature  is 
also  condensed  by  Goethe  into  a  short  phrase  when  he 
makes  the  Earth-Spirit  describe  his  activities  to  Faust 
as  the  weaving  of  der  Gottheit  lebendiges  Kleid. 

Relevant  examples  from  Wordsworth — from  The 
Prelude  and  Lines  composed  a  jew  miles  above  Tintern 
Abbey — are  too  well  known  to  need  repetition  here. 
An  excellent  example  of  a  poetic  account  of  this  expe¬ 
rience  (which  is  not  interpreted  theistically)  is  also 
found  in  Swinburne’s  A  Nympholept: 

The  whole  wood  feels  thee,  the  whole  air  fears  thee: 
but  fear 

So  deep,  so  dim,  so  sacred,  is  wellnigh  sweet. 

For  the  light  that  hangs  and  broods  on  the  woodlands 
here, 

Intense,  invasive,  intolerant,  imperious,  and  meet 
To  lighten  the  wrorks  of  thine  hands  and  the  ways  of 
thy  feet, 

Is  hot  with  the  fire  of  the  breath  of  thy  life,  and  dear 
As  hope  that  shrivels  and  shrinks  not  for  frost  or  heat. 

But  the  poet  questions  the  optimistic  intellectualisa- 
tion  of  the  experience  which  is  made  by  the  religious 
believer.  The  beauty  of  Nature  is  on  the  surface  of  his 
experience,  but  not  the  goodness  demanded  by  a  belief 
in  God. 

Thee,  therefore,  thee  wrould  I  come  to,  cleave  to,  cling, 
If  haply  thy  heart  be  kind  and  thy  gifts  be  good, 
Unknown  sweet  spirit,  whose  vesture  is  soft  in  spring, 
In  summer  splendid.  .  .  . 

among  the  stalks,  the  innumerable  incomprehensible  shapes  of  the 
tiny  worms  and  gnats  are  near  to  my  heart,  and  I  feel  the  presence 
of  the  Almighty  who  created  us  after  His  own  image,  the  breath  of 
the  All-loving  who  upholds  and  sustains  us  in  eternal  bliss,  my 
friend,  when  my  eyes  become  dim  and  the  world  about  me  and  the 
heavens  are  imprinted  on  my  soul  like  the  image  of  a  loved  one.. .” 


34 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


The  experience  which  these  passages  are  trying  to 
describe  is  an  emotional  relationship  to  natural  objects 
which  is  of  the  same  kind  as  that  which  we  feel  towards 
a  person.  The  natural  world  is  felt  to  be,  not  a  chance 
arrangement  of  non-sentient  objects,  but  as  something 
with  which  the  observer  may  have  intimate  personal 
relations — something  towards  which  he  may  feel  love 
or  awe.  One  is  tempted  to  say  that  this  experience 
leads  to  pantheism,  but  this  is  probably  too  simple  to 
be  entirely  true.  It  would  seem  to  be  more  accurate  to 
say  that  this  experience  leads  to  the  positive  element  in 
pantheism — the  doctrine  of  immanence.  Pantheism 
however  contains  also  a  negative  element  in  the  denial 
of  the  transcendence  of  its  god.  If  combined  with  a 
doctrine  of  the  transcendence  of  God  (supplied  by 
reflection  on  other  types  of  religious  experience)  this 
experience  may  lead  to  theism  of  a  kind  familiar  in 
Christianity. 

We  do  in  fact  find  numerous  theistic  descriptions  of 
it.  In  the  account  of  his  conversion,  Brother  Lawrence 
says : 

That  in  the  winter,  seeing  a  tree  stripped  of  its 
leaves,  and  considering  that  within  a  little  time,  the 
leaves  would  be  renewed,  and  after  that  the  flowers 
and  fruit  appear,  he  received  a  high  view  of  the  Provi¬ 
dence  and  Power  of  God,  which  has  never  since  been 
effaced  from  his  soul.1 

A  description  of  a  similar  state  by  a  narrator  of  a 
very  different  kind  is  found  in  the  following  account  of 
a  conversion  in  Starbuck’s  book: 

It  wTas  like  entering  another  world — a  new  state  of 
existence.  Natural  objects  were  glorified.  My  spiritual 

1  The  Practice  of  the  Presence  of  God ,  by  Brother  Lawrence, 
First  Conversation. 


THE  NATURAL  ELEMENT 


35 


vision  was  so  clarified  that  I  saw  beauty  in  et  ery 
material  object  in  the  universe.  The  woods  were  vocal 
with  heavenly  music.1 

It  is  instructive  also  to  notice  the  patterns  of  reli¬ 
gious  temperament  in  which  this  type  of  experience  is 
absent.  We  may  suppose  that  to  a  mentality  hostile 
to  the  idea  of  divine  immanence  in  Nature  the  experi¬ 
ence  would  not  occur,  or  if  it  did,  it  would  be  imme¬ 
diately  suppressed  as  something  illusory  or  evil.  This 
hostility  may,  no  doubt,  merely  be  the  result  of  theo¬ 
logical  or  philosophical  prejudices  against  such  a  doc¬ 
trine  as  that  of  divine  immanence;  but  the  wide  range 
of  religious  thought  in  which  any  doctrine  expressing 
this  experience  is  totally  absent  suggests  a  deeper 
reason  than  this.  A  hint  of  what  this  reason  may  be 
can  be  found  in  the  poem  quoted  above.  The  idea  that 
God  expresses  Himself  in  the  beauty  of  Nature  implies 
an  optimistic  attitude  towards  the  external  world.  To 
the  unreflective  man,  healthy  in  mind  and  body,  and 
not  much  burdened  by  ultimate  moral  problems,  this 
attitude  is  a  natural  one.  For  him  there  is  no  conflict 
when  he  sees  Nature  as  the  face  of  God.  The  matter 
is  however  different  with  the  sensitive  soul  of  the 
Buddha,  tortured  by  the  sight  of  the  misery  and  cruelty 
of  the  world,  or  of  St  Paul,  acutely  conscious  of  sin  in 
himself  and  in  mankind.  To  such  mentalities,  Nature 
is  not  good.  For  them,  the  experience  we  are  describ¬ 
ing  would  come  into  conflict  with  the  stronger  experi¬ 
ence  of  the  reality  of  pain  or  evil.2 

This  may  perhaps  account  for  its  absence  from  the 
Gospels  and  from  that  ascetic  school  of  Christianity  of 

1Starbuck,  The  Psychology  of  Religion,  p.  120. 

2  Itself  rationalised  in  the  Vedantic  doctrine  of  the  external  world 
as  illusion,  and  in  the  Christian  doctrines  of  Creation  and  the  Devil. 


36  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

which  the  example  best  known  to  English  readers  is 
St  Thomas  a  Kempis.  We  seem  indeed  to  find  in  some 
Christian  ascetics  a  deliberate  repression  of  any  emo¬ 
tional  attitude  towards  Nature.  They  hide  their  faces 
from  its  beauty  lest  it  should  make  them  love  purely 
natural  things  and  so  steal  their  hearts  from  God. 
“Men  draw  thither/’  says  St  Augustine,  “to  admire  the 
heights  of  the  mountains  and  the  powerful  waves  of 
the  sea — and  to  turn  away  from  themselves.” 

This  repulsion  from  natural  beauty  is  expressed  also 
by  St  Catherine  of  Genoa  in  her  Vita: 

The  sun,  which  at  first  seemed  so  clear  to  me,  now 
seems  obscure;  what  used  to  seem  sweet  to  me,  now 
seems  bitter:  because  all  beauties  and  all  sweetnesses 
that  have  an  admixture  of  the  creature  are  corrupt 
and  spoilt.1 

We  have  so  far  been  discussing  this  feeling  for  the 
external  wTorld  as  a  vague  whole  without  asking 
whether  it  may  not  be  possible  to  analyse  it  into 
simpler  elements.  There  are  three  constituent  parts  in 
this  experience  which  may  readily  be  distinguished. 
These  are  the  experiences  of  beneficence,  of  harmony 
and  of  beauty.  We  will  consider  these  three  parts 
separately,  taking  beneficence  first. 

Some  things  in  Nature  appear  to  be  favourable  to 
man — gentle  warmth,  seasonable  rains,  domestic  ani¬ 
mals  and  all  the  numerous  accidents  which  preserve 
his  life  or  increase  his  happiness.  Others  seem  un¬ 
favourable  to  him — extreme  heat  and  cold,  tempests, 
wuld  beasts  and  all  disastrous  and  uncomfortable  hap¬ 
penings.  It  is  not  unnatural  for  him  to  see  in  the 
former  the  works  of  a  being  who  loves  him,  and  in  the 

1  Baron  F.  von  Hiigel,  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion  (London, 
1909),  quoting  Vita,  p.  23  c. 


THE  NATURAL  ELEMENT 


37 


latter  the  handiwork  of  a  being  wTho  is  opposed  to  him. 
This  gives  us  the  raw  material  for  a  very  simple  reli¬ 
gion.  It  is,  we  may  notice,  purely  anthropocentric.  It 
is  also  dualistic.  There  is  a  sharp  division  between  the 
province  of  its  god  and  the  realm  opposed  to  him. 
Moreover,  it  is  a  dualism  on  a  low  plane — the  plane  of 
simple  and  natural  human  desires. 

We  must  not  expect  to  find  this  element  developed 
alone  in  any  religion  which  has  as  its  object  more  than 
the  satisfaction  of  man's  bodily  desires.  It  has  been 
suggested  that  early  Persian  religion  is  very  nearly  on 
this  level.  But  it  is  found  as  an  element  in  even  the 
most  developed  religions.  It  is  the  element  in  religion 
which  is  connoted  by  the  word  Providence.  It  is  not 
absent  from  the  more  developed  religions  until  we 
reach  a  high  level  of  mysticism.  At  that  level  we  find 
St  Catherine  of  Genoa  exclaiming:  “I  will  not  name 
myself  either  for  good  or  for  evil,  lest  this  my  (selfish) 
part  should  esteem  itself  to  be  something.”  1  Yet  it  is 
an  element  the  abandonment  of  which  would  leave 
ordinary  religion  the  poorer.  It  repels  us  when  we 
meet  it  in  an  exaggerated  form.  God  must  be  more 
even  to  the  most  primitive  faith  than  an  efficient  uni¬ 
versal  provider.  William  James,  in  his  Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience,  gives  the  following  extract  from 
the  narrative  of  an  English  prisoner  of  war  on  a  French 
ship  who  attacked  the  crew,  killed  two,  and  made  the 
rest  prisoner: 

I  looked  about  for  a  marlin  spike  or  anything  else  to 
strike  them  withal.  But  seeing  nothing,  I  said,  “Lord! 
wdiat  shall  I  do?”  Then  casting  up  my  eye  upon  my 
left  side,  and  seeing  a  marlin  spike  hanging,  I  jerked 

1  Baron  F.  von  Hiigel,  The  Mystical  Element  oj  Religion  (London, 
1909),  p.  269. 


38  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

my  right  arm  and  took  hold,  and  struck  the  point  four 
times  about  a  quarter  of  an  inch  deep  into  the  skull 
of  that  man  that  had  hold  of  my  left  arm.  [One  of  the 
Frenchmen  then  hauled  the  marlin  spike  away  from 
him.]  But  through  God’s  wonderful  providence  it 
either  fell  out  of  his  hand,  or  else  he  threw  it  down, 
and  at  this  time  the  Almighty  God  gave  me  strength 
enough  to  take  one  man  in  one  hand,  and  throw  at 
the  other’s  head:  and  looking  about  again  to  see  any¬ 
thing  to  strike  them  withal,  but  seeing  nothing,  I  said, 
“Lord!  what  shall  I  do  now?”  And  then  it  pleased 
God  to  put  me  in  mind  of  my  knife  in  my  pocket.  And 
although  two  of  the  men  had  hold  of  my  right  arm, 
yet  God  Almighty  strengthened  me  so  that  I  put  my 
right  hand  into  my  right  pocket,  drew  out  the  knife 
and  sheath,  .  .  .  put  it  between  my  legs  and  drew  it 
out,  and  then  cut  the  man’s  throat  with  it  that  had 
his  back  to  my  breast :  and  he  immediately  dropt  dowrn, 
and  scarce  ever  stirred  after.1 

The  revulsion  which  we  feel  against  the  religious 
attitude  of  the  narrator  of  this  story  is  not  because  the 
element  of  religion  which  is  the  dominant  one  in  his 
mind — the  attitude  towards  God  as  Providence — is  an 
unhealthy  one.  It  is  because  that  element  has  become 
exaggerated,  and  this  exaggeration  has  resulted  in  an 
attitude  towards  religion  wdiich  we  recognise  as  primi¬ 
tive  and  infantile. 

Even  in  his  experience  of  the  external  world,  the 
ordinary  religious  man  sees  more  in  God  than  a  mere 
provider  for  human  needs.  There  seems  to  be  in  the 
world  a  harmony  and  purpose  quite  apart  from  his 
human  requirements.  The  kind  of  thing  that  is  meant 
may  be  best  illustrated  from  Paley’s  Natural  Theology. 
As  psychologists  we  may  use  Paley  as  a  guide  in  these 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience  (London,  1903),  p.  471. 


THE  NATURAL  ELEMENT 


39 


matters  without  enquiring  into  the  rigidity  of  his 
proofs.  When  Paley  says  that  he  can  prove  conclu¬ 
sively  the  existence  of  God  by  a  consideration  of  the 
adaptations  of  organisms,  we  are  not  as  psychologists 
interested  in  whether  or  not  his  proof  is  sound.  What 
we  are  interested  in  is  the  fact  that  he  has  shown  us 
one  way  by  which  the  mind  of  man  has  passed  from 
the  external  world  to  the  idea  of  God.  The  intellec- 
tualisation  of  this  step  may  be  totally  unsound.  The 
step  itself  is  a  psychological  fact,  and  I  suppose  it  to  be 
a  fact  before  it  is  intellectualised.  So,  when  Paley 
deduces  from  the  mutual  adaptations  of  the  parts  of 
organisms  and  from  the  adaptation  of  organisms  to 
their  environment  that  they  were  created  by  a  per¬ 
sonal  designer,  we  may  conclude  that  this  feeling  that 
the  world  appears  like  a  manufactured  article  is  one 
root  of  religious  belief.  In  other  words,  we  conclude 
that  in  the  religious  man’s  experience  of  the  external 
world,  harmony  as  well  as  beneficence  plays  a  part  in 
the  building  up  of  his  religious  belief. 

Thirdly,  there  is  the  experience  of  beauty  in  the 
world.  To  many  people  this  is  not  strong;  to  others 
the  world  seems  to  be  wonderfully  and  unnecessarily 
beautiful.  They  do  not  feel,  as  did  Paley,  that  the 
world  is  like  a  watch.  It  seems  to  them  to  be  more  like 
a  picture.  Not  only  are  they  sure  that  it  was  made  by 
someone,  but  also  that  it  was  made  by  someone  whose 
thoughts  and  feelings  they  are  able  in  some  way  to 
share. 

It  would  be  possible  indefinitely  to  multiply  quota¬ 
tions  descriptive  of  this  feeling  from  a  source  I  have 
already  used — the  writings  of  nature  mysticism.  We 
will  be  content,  however,  with  a  single  passage  of  a 
different  kind.  It  is  the  narrative  of  the  beginning  of  a 


40 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


man’s  religious  life  told  by  Dr  Dale  in  his  Christian 
Doctrine: 

I  was  living  in  a  small  town  in  one  of  the  southern 
counties  of  England,  and  one  Sunday  afternoon  I  went 
out  into  the  country  for  a  stroll.  It  was  summer,  and 
after  walking  for  a  few  miles  I  lay  down  on  the  side  of 
a  hill.  I  saw,  stretching  to  the  distant  horizon,  mead¬ 
ows  and  orchards  and  cornfields;  the  cloudless  skies 
were  gloriously  blue,  and  the  sun  was  flooding  earth 
and  heaven  wdth  splendour.  The  wonderful  beauty 
filled  me  with  excitement  and  delight.  And  then  sud¬ 
denly,  through  all  that  I  saw,  there  came  the  very  glory 
of  God.  I  knew  that  He  was  there.  His  presence,  His 
power,  and  His  goodness  took  possession  of  me  and 
held  me  for  hours. 

This  experience  of  beauty  has  been  given  intellectual 
form  by  philosophers  in  a  demonstrative  argument 
from  the  presence  of  beauty  in  the  world  to  a  cause 
adequate  to  account  for  it.  This  is  generally  known  as 
the  Aesthetic  Argument.  As  in  speaking  of  Paley’s 
argument  from  design,  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss  the 
validity  of  this  argument,  but  merely  to  note  it  as  a 
confirmation  of  the  fact  that  this  experience  is  one  root 
of  the  belief  in  God. 

Whether  or  not  it  can  be  justified  by  reason  as  valid, 
the  passage  from  these  experiences  of  beneficence,  har¬ 
mony  and  beauty  to  Theism,  i.e.  to  a  belief  in  God,  is  a 
natural  one.  If  things  in  the  world  seem  to  be,  on  the 
whole,  arranged  so  as  to  be  favourable  to  the  needs  of 
man,  what  is  more  natural  than  that  he  should  conclude 
that  it  is  arranged  by  someone  who  is  taking  care  of 
him.  If  things  seem,  on  the  whole,  to  be  ordered  on  an 
intelligible  plan,  what  is  more  natural  than  for  him  to 
conclude  that  there  is  an  intelligent  designer  of  the 


THE  NATURAL  ELEMENT 


41 


universe.  If  beauty  appears  in  the  world,  what  is  more 
natural  than  for  him  to  suppose  that  this  beauty  is  the 
expression  of  a  personal  being.  In  each  case,  we  may 
say  that  the  belief  in  God  is  an  inteUectualisation  of  the 
experience.  It  is  the  simplest  possible  explanation  of 
the  experience  in  intellectual  terms. 

There  is  one  characteristic  of  the  Theism  reached  by 
these  experiences  which  we  must  notice.  It  is,  in  each 
case,  dualistic.  That  is,  its  conception  of  God  defi¬ 
nitely  excludes  part  of  experience,  a  part  which  is 
regarded  as  hostile  to  His  nature.  This  hostile  part 
consists  of  the  elements  of  malevolence,  disorder  and 
ugliness.  By  the  element  of  malevolence,  I  mean  all  in 
nature  that  is  opposed  to  man’s  well-being — extreme 
temperatures,  wild  beasts  and  unfortunate  accidents. 
By  disorder,  all  those  things  in  the  world  which  seem 
to  show  an  absence  of  design.  The  whole  drama  of  fife, 
with  one  animal  preying  on  another,  the  capriciousness 
and  indifference  to  merit  of  the  fate  of  individuals  (as 
it  is  depicted,  for  example,  in  Hardy’s  novels)  and 
lastlv  the  vision  which  phvsical  science  offers  to  us  of 
the  whole  universe  ending  in  a  lifeless,  meaningless 
condition  of  uniform  temperature,  gives  a  total  picture 
of  waste  and  disorder  at  least  as  spontaneously  impres¬ 
sive  as  the  world  of  design  depicted  by  Paley.  There 
are  also  the  elements  in  the  world  which  seem,  at  first 
sight,  to  be  products  of  an  evil  design:  the  disgusting 
limbless  parasite  which  shows  the  same  admirable 
adaptation  to  its  environment  as  that  of  the  nobler 
animals  over  which  the  enthusiasm  of  the  eighteenth 
century  religious  apologists  was  poured,  and  the  in¬ 
creased  capacity  for  suffering  and  inflicting  pain  which 
has  accompanied  the  growth  of  self-consciousness  in 
man.  Lastly,  there  is  the  element  of  ugliness  to  be 


42 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


found  in  all  those  aspects  of  the  universe  which  seem 
to  us  to  be  sordid,  unlovely  and  revolting. 

Religious  belief,  therefore,  so  far  as  it  is  drawn  from 
this  element  of  experience  will  certainly  be  dualistic. 
God  will  have  a  real  element  in  the  world  opposed  to 
him.  Of  course,  this' dualism  may  be  modified  (as  it  is 
in  all  developed  religions)  by  other  experience  or  by 
reflective  thought.  We  are  not  at  present  concerned 
with  this  modification. 

Any  optimistic  Theistic  belief  (and,  in  practice, 
nearly  all  religion  is  found  to  be  optimistic)  will  have 
the  conviction  that  these  opposed  elements  in  the 
universe  will  be  overcome.  In  Zarathustrianism,  for 
example,  it  was  believed  that 

finally,  the  powers  of  good  and  evil  will  engage  in  a  last 
conflict.  Ahriman  and  the  evil  host  will  be  cast  into 
the  stream  of  molten  metal.  Then  will  the  whole  world 
be  purified,  the  whole  universe  filled  with  Ahura  Maz¬ 
da’s  being,  and  all  that  lives  will  pass  into  immortality 
and  celestial  perfection.1 

But  this  optimism  is  not  provided  by  the  experience 
we  are  discussing.  It  comes  into  religion  through  some 
other  element  of  experience  or  perhaps  through  some 
process  of  reasoning.  So  long  as  we  remain  on  the 
plane  of  experience  of  the  external  world,  we  have  an 
unresolved  dualism. 

But  these  experiences  which  we  may  call  evil  (re¬ 
membering  that  we  are  using  the  word  evil  without 
any  moral  meaning)  may  do  more  than  provide  an 
opposing  element  in  religious  belief.  They  appear  to 
some  minds  so  to  predominate  that  they  provide  the 
material  for  an  atheistic  interpretation  of  the  universe 
or  (if  theism  has  been  reached  through  the  other  roots 
1  Comparative  Religion ,  by  F.  B.  Jevon  (Cambridge,  1913),  p.  101. 


THE  NATURAL  ELEMENT  43 

of  religious  belief)  for  a  theism  which  is  pessimistic 
towards  this  world.  .  .  . 

This  reaction  towards  the  world  is  illustrated  by  the 
story  of  the  early  religious  life  of  the  Buddha,  He  had 
led  a  happy  and  peaceful  life  in  a  palace.  Then  during 
a  drive  he  was  brought  face  to  face  wTith  disease,  old 
age  and  death.  Henceforth,  these  seemed  to  him  to  be 
the  predominant  facts  of  the  world,  and  he  was  led  to 
an  attitude  deeply  pessimistic  and  effectively  atheistic. 
As  more  modern  examples,  two  widely  read  English 
authors  may  be  taken.  Hardy,  in  his  novels,  depicts 
the  capriciousness  with  which  a  fate  indifferent  to 
human  happiness  and  human  merit  crushes  and  de¬ 
stroys  a  noble  character,  and  he  ironically  represents 
this  as  the  sport  of  the  President  of  the  Immortals. 
Sir  Francis  Younghusband  in  a  book  called  Within, 
describes  how  his  faith  in  God  was  destroyed  by  a  pain¬ 
ful  accident,  and  details  the  other  facts  of  the  universe 
which  seem  to  him  to  make  the  hypothesis  of  a  benevo¬ 
lent  God  an  untenable  intellectualisation. 

The  possibility  of  such  a  reaction  showTs  an  obvious 
weakness  in  this  element  of  religious  belief,  but  there  is 
no  sufficient  reason  for  denying  its  importance  in  con¬ 
junction  with  other  elements.  The  people  in  whom  it 
has  been  strongest  have  indeed  often  been  content  to 
ignore  part  of  their  experience  of  the  world  in  order  to 
build  up  a  religious  faith  from  its  more  pleasant 
aspects.  Particularly  is  this  true  of  the  religious  apol¬ 
ogists  who  have  provided  a  demonstration  of  the  exist¬ 
ence  of  God  by  the  complacent  enumeration  of  the 
pleasant  features  of  the  world.  But,  at  the  same  time, 
we  must  notice  that  this  element  in  religion  has  been 
strong  in  many  who  have  by  no  means  closed  their  eyes 
to  the  unpleasant  side  of  the  world.  The  example 


44 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


which  most  readily  occurs  to  the  mind  is  St  Francis,  to 
whom  the  world  appeared  to  be  full  of  God  although  he 
deliberately  put  himself  in  touch  with  its  most  un¬ 
pleasant  aspects. 

After  discussing  each  of  the  roots  of  religious  belief, 
we  may  usefully  enquire  into  the  type  of  religion  in 
which  it  receives  undue  prominence.  The  type  of 
religious  belief  which  results  from  such  an  exaggeration 
of  the  natural  element  may  be  found  in  the  form  of 
Natural  Religion  which  was  in  vogue  about  the  middle 
of  the  last  century.  Its  weakness  as  a  religious  belief 
was  shown  by  the  ease  with  which  it  degenerated  into 
a  merely  sentimental  attitude  towards  the  pleasant 
aspects  of  the  world,  without  real  feeling  for  God  as 
transcendent,  and  deficient  in  moral  value.  A  similar 
example  in  which  one  part  only  of  this  element  is 
exaggerated  is  to  be  found  in  those  whose  religious 
convictions  are  built  exclusively  on  the  foundation  of 
natural  beaut}".  The  weakness  of  such  a  support  when 
it  is  made  exclusively  to  bear  the  weight  of  our  deepest 
convictions  has  been  illustrated  by  Professor  Caldecott 
(I  do  not  know  with  what  justice)  by  the  following 
passage  written  by  Ruskin  towards  the  end  of  his  life: 

Morning  breaks,  as  I  write,  along  these  Coniston 
Fells,  and  the  level  mists,  motionless  and  gray  beneath 
the  gorse  of  the  moorlands,  veil  the  lower  woods  and 
the  sleeping  village  and  the  long  lawns  by  the  lake 
shore.  Oh  that  someone  had  but  told  me  in  my  youth, 
when  all  my  heart  seemed  to  be  set  in  those  colours  and 
clouds,  that  appear  for  a  little  while  and  then  vanish 
away,  how  little  my  love  of  them  would  serve  me,  when 
the  silence  of  lawn  and  wood  in  the  dews  of  morning 
should  be  completed;  and  all  my  thoughts  should  be 
of  those  whom,  by  neither,  I  was  to  meet  more. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  MORAL  ELEMENT  IN  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

In  the  last  chapter  we  were  discussing  experiences  of 
the  outside  world  which  tended  to  result  in  the  con¬ 
firmation  of  religious  belief.  The  experience  to  which 
I  propose  to  draw  your  attention  in  the  present  chapter 
is  of  a  conflict  which  exists  in  the  mind  itself — the 
moral  conflict.  This  is  the  conflict  which  results  from 
the  fact  that  the  individual  finds  his  own  immediate  de¬ 
sires  opposed  by  an  outside  requirement — the  moral  law. 

Before  going  any  further  it  may  be  as  well  to  notice 
that  we  are  not  concerned  in  psychology  with  the 
questions  which  would  be  raised  at  this  stage  in  a 
philosophical  treatment  of  ethics.  It  does  not  matter 
to  us  what  the  moral  law  is — whether  it  is  at  bottom  a 
codification  of  the  requirements  of  society,  or  whether 
it  is  something  quite  independent  of  any  sort  of  utility 
and  existing  as  really  and  independently  as  the  outside 
world.  It  is  sufficient  for  us  to  be  satisfied  that  the 
conflict  is  a  genuine  psychological  fact,  and  that  it  is  an 
important  one.  For  the  sake  of  convenience  we  will 
call  the  system  of  forces  reacting  against  our  own 
immediate  desires  in  the  moral  conflict,  the  moral  lam . 
Nothing  that  we  say  about  the  moral  conflict  will  in 
any  way  be  altered  if  we  regard  the  moral  lawT  as  merely 
a  summary  of  the  requirements  of  society,  if  we  regard 
it  as  something  real  and  independent,  or  if  we  adopt 
some  other  possible  theory  about  it. 

The  moral  conflict  is  not  dependent  on  religious  faith 

45 


46 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


in  such  a  way  that  without  religious  faith  it  would 
disappear.  It  is  often  stated  that  it  is,  but  I  have  never 
heard  any  reason  given  for  this  opinion  which  seemed 
sufficiently  strong  to  outweigh  the  empirical  fact  that 
in  the  minds  of  persons  who  have  lost  their  religious 
faith,  the  moral  conflict  is  found  to  exist  after  their  loss 
as  it  did  before. 

The  experience  of  the  moral  conflict  does,  however, 
tend  to  result  in  religious  belief,  and  this  in  two  ways. 
When  a  man  feels  the  conflict  strongly  he  tends  to 
objectify  the  two  sides  of  it,  and  he  objectifies  the 
forces  on  the  side  of  moral  goodness  as  God.  Other 
people  seem  to  pass  from  the  moral  conflict  to  a  belief 
in  God  by  the  practical  necessity  they  feel  for  a  belief 
in  God  in  order  that  they  may  be  kept  good  at  all. 
These  are  two  quite  distinct  methods  of  reaching  relig¬ 
ious  belief  from  the  moral  conflict,  and  it  only  leads  to 
confusion  of  thought  to  fail  to  distinguish  them. 

The  first  method  of  passing  from  the  moral  conflict 
to  religion  is  quite  plainly  the  same  mental  process  as 
we  were  considering  in  the  last  chapter.  It  is  an  intel- 
lectualisation  (or  rationalisation)  of  an  experience. 
The  belief  that  the  good  side  of  the  moral  conflict  is  the 
expression  of  the  will  of  some  being  who  is  infinitely 
good,  is  a  simple  explanation  of  the  felt  importance  of 
the  moral  conflict.  Thus  the  belief  in  a  good  God  is  an 
intellectualisation  of  the  experience  of  the  moral 
conflict. 

This  is  given  the  form  of  a  demonstrative  argument 
in  the  famous  moral  argument  for  the  existence  of  God. 
This  is  essentially  a  deduction  from  the  stated  fact  that 
the  demands  of  morality  are  something  as  real  and 
objective  as  the  external  world.  This  reality  can  only 
be  accounted  for  by  assuming  the  existence  of  God.  As 


THE  MORAL  ELEMENT 


47 


before,  we  will  not  feel  ourselves  concerned  with  the 
question  of  the  force  of  this  argument;  but  note  that 
the  very  wide  appeal  it  has  made  is  an  indication  that 
we  have  here,  in  the  objectification  of  the  moral  con¬ 
flict,  one  of  the  sources  of  the  belief  in  God. 

But  there  are  other  people  who,  when  they  are 
examined  about  their  religion,  show  a  totally  different 
reaction  to  the  moral  conflict.  They  feel  that  unless 
they  believed  in  God,  they  could  not  be  good.  With¬ 
out  that  belief,  they  would  be  unable  to  find  any 
motive  strong  enough  for  moral  conduct.  Their  belief 
is  not  the  intellectualisation  of  an  experience,  but  a 
belief  dictated  by  a  practical  need.  This  is  a  psycho¬ 
logical  process  similar  to  what  the  psychoanalysts  call  a 
wish- fulfilment.  If  there  is  a  strong  practical  necessity 
for  a  belief  to  be  true,  the  mind  tends  to  accept  that 
belief.  In  practice,  of  course,  it  is  not  generally 
founded  on  a  practical  necessity  alone.  A  belief  origi¬ 
nated  in  other  ways  has  its  acceptance  by  the  mind 
facilitated  by  the  fact  that  it  fulfils  a  practical  need. 

This  tendency  too  has  been  given  intellectual  ex¬ 
pression.  An  argument  from  human  need  to  reality  is 
not  indeed  common  in  the  philosophy  of  religion, 
because  it  is  not  generally  felt  by  philosophers  to  have 
much  compelling  force;  but  it  is  found  very  commonly 
in  the  looser  thinking  of  popular  religious  writing.  It 
is  not  unusual  to  find  in  such  writing  the  argument 
used  against  atheism  that  it  would  lead  to  immorality, 
without  any  further  discussion  of  the  problem  of 
whether  it  is  not  possible  that  a  doctrine  may  be  true 
even  though  it  does  lead  to  immorality. 

We  may  now  pass  to  the  discussion  of  the  charac¬ 
teristic  features  of  the  contribution  which  this  element 
makes  to  religious  belief.  In  the  first  place,  like  the 


48 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


naturalistic  element,  its  contribution  is  necessarily 
dualistic.  As  before,  this  dualism  may  be  modified  by 
other  experiences  or  by  the  demands  of  rational  think¬ 
ing.  But  it  is  a  necessary  character  of  moral  experience 
that  we  find  in  the  moral  conflict  two  sides,  the  good 
and  the  evil.  The  distinctive  contribution  which  it 
makes  to  the  conception  of  God  is  that  it  tends  to  con¬ 
ceive  God  as  the  supreme  lawgiver.  In  forms  of  relig¬ 
ious  belief  in  which  this  element  is  exaggerated,  the 
conception  of  God  will  be  found  to  be  unduly  legalistic. 

When  we  come  to  examine  those  forms  of  religion  in 
which  this  element  has  attained  a  position  of  high 
importance,  we  find  ourselves  face  to  face  with  a  much 
more  interesting  problem  than  those  which  confronted 
us  in  our  discussion  of  other  roots  of  belief.  In  the 
other  cases  such  exaggerations  were  seen  to  be  of  rela¬ 
tive  unimportance  at  the  present  time  amongst  edu¬ 
cated  persons.  In  the  case  of  the  moral  element,  this  is 
not  so.  A  very  large  number  of  people  at  the  present 
time  consider  that  the  task  of  dealing  with  the  moral 
conflict  is  the  sole  legitimate  one  for  religion,  and  all 
that  there  is  actually  in  the  higher  religions  apart  from 
the  moral  element  is  an  accretion  which  it  is  the  task 
of  an  enlightened  criticism  of  religion  to  purge  away. 
Very  often  this  is  stated  definitely  by  modern  writers 
on  religion.  Often  too  it  is  implicit  in  their  whole 
treatment  of  the  subject  although  it  is  not  definitely 
stated.  Thus  William  James  in  his  Varieties  of  Relig¬ 
ious  Experience  makes  an  examination  of  traditional 
sainthood  in  which  he  tries  to  be  sympathetic  to  it,  but 
finds  on  the  whole  that  it  represents  an  ideal  which  is 
really  unintelligible  to  the  modem  mind.  It  is  not 
difficult  in  reading  James’s  work,  to  see  what  is  wrong. 
He  has  found  himself  absolutely  unable  to  enter  into  a 


THE  MORAL  ELEMENT 


49 


conception  of  religion  in  which  the  ideal  is  not  a  moral 
one  at  all.  Amongst  American  psychologists,  Coe  more 
definitely  attaches  a  high  importance  to  the  moral  ele¬ 
ment  in  religion;  and  it  seems  clear  from  his  preface 
that  this  is  because  this  element  did,  as  a  fact,  pre¬ 
dominate  in  his  own  religion. 

Historically,  there  has  always  been  a  tendency  for 
the  separation  out  of  the  Christian  religion  of  com¬ 
munities  in  which  the  moral  root  predominated.  This 
tendency  is  found  in  puritanism  and  pietism  in  the 
Protestant  tradition,  and  in  Jansenism  in  the  Catholic. 
There  has  been  in  it  a  very  variable  tendency  amongst 
them  to  distrust  religious  feeling,  and  a  constant  one  to 
distrust  the  naturalistic  element.  This  distrust  is  prob¬ 
ably  responsible  for  the  harshness  of  Puritanism  (using 
this  word  generically  to  cover  Jansenism,  etc.)  towards 
the  natural  affections.  Since  in  this  type  of  religion, 
God  becomes  the  supreme  lawgiver  rather  than  the 
lover  of  souls,  it  is  not  surprising  that  it  has  tended  to 
produce  a  religion  which  is  curiously  hard  and  un¬ 
lovely.  It  seems  almost  incredible  to  our  milder  relig¬ 
ious  sentiment  at  the  present  day,  that  under  the 
influence  of  this  tradition  only  a  short  time  ago  little 
children  were  frightened  by  threats  of  hell-fire  for 
childish  faults,  and  that  it  w’as  not  thought  a  dishonour 
to  God  that  he  was  first  presented  to  their  minds  as  a 
supreme  bogey-man. 

There  is  certainly  room  for  difference  of  opinion 
about  what  ought  to  be  the  nature  of  religion,  and  as 
psychologists  we  have  no  more  right  than  anybody  else 
to  dogmatise  about  that  question.  But  it  is  necessary 
to  insist  that  it  leads  to  a  totally  wrong  method  in  the 
treatment  of  our  subject  to  assume  that  that  is  what 
religion  is;  to  try  to  read  into  historical  religion  the 


50 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


moral  element  alone  and  to  ignore  all  that  it  owes  to 
other  elements  as  secondary  accretions.  It  is  not  true, 
for  example,  that  historically  Christianity  has  looked 
upon  the  love  of  God  as  a  means  of  furthering  morality. 
On  the  contrary,  the  tendency  has  been  rather  to  look 
upon  it  as  an  end  in  itself,  and  to  value  morality 
mainly  as  a  means  of  securing  that  end.  The  aim  of 
religion,  according  to  St  Thomas  Aquinas,  is  the  attain¬ 
ment  of  the  Beatific  Vision;  it  is  an  experience,  not  a 
moral  ideal.  Moreover,  a  complaint  may  be  made 
against  the  assumption  without  argument  that  moral¬ 
ity  ought  to  be  the  sole  concern  of  religion.  We  may 
doubt  this  whether  we  are  unbelievers  or  believers  in 
the  claim  of  religion  to  truth.  Even  from  a  purely 
this-world  point  of  view,  religious  belief  may  have  a 
higher  value  in  the  satisfaction  of  emotional  needs 
which  are  otherwise  unsatisfied;  its  contribution  to 
happiness  may  be  as  important  as  its  contribution  to 
morality.  Possibly  the  increase  of  mental  trouble  at 
the  present  time  amongst  educated  persons  may  be  due 
in  part  to  the  decay  of  religious  faith.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  there  is  objective  truth  in  religious  belief,  there 
seems  to  be  no  ground  at  all  for  attaching  this  ex¬ 
clusive  importance  to  morality.  The  affective  relation 
to  God  must  be  at  least  as  important  as  right  conduct. 

We  cannot  leave  this  subject  without  discussing  a 
practical  problem  which  the  history  of  some  phases  of 
religious  thought  has  made  important.  This  is  the 
problem  of  the  value  of  concern  about  sin.  That  some 
measure  of  concern  about  sin  is  of  high  moral  value 
will,  of  course,  be  disputed  by  no  one.  It  is  necessary, 
however,  to  point  out  that  an  exaggerated  horror  of  sin 
may  not  only  be  undesirable  as  tending  to  produce  a 
generally  unhealthy  and  morbid  attitude  of  mind;  it 


THE  MORAL  ELEMENT 


51 


may  also  defeat  its  own  ends  by  failing  as  an  incen¬ 
tive  to  goodness. 

This  sounds  paradoxical.  It  may  be  objected  that 
if  hatred  of  sin  is  the  emotional  driving  force  behind 
moral  conduct,  then  the  stronger  the  emotion,  the 
stronger  will  be  its  effect.  This,  however,  is  not  always 
true.  There  are  occasions  when  a  strong  emotional 
reaction  against  a  particular  course  of  action  makes 
it  more  difficult  to  avoid  that  course  of  action;  and 
increased  voluntary  effort  is  not  merely  useless  but 
tends  even  to  intensify  the  difficulty.  These  cases 
come  under  what  has  been  called  by  the  new  Nancy 
psychiatric  school  The  LawT  of  Reversed  Effort/  I 
propose  to  discuss  this  law  in  a  later  chapter;  at  pres¬ 
ent  we  may  be  content  with  a  simple  illustration  which 
will  convince  us  of  its  existence.  Suppose  that  you 
have  been  told  to  walk  along  a  plank  lying  on  the  floor 
of  the  room  in  which  you  are  at  present  sitting,  with¬ 
out  stepping  off  on  either  side.  You  would  have  very 
little  emotion  about  the  possibility  of  your  failure,  and 
you  would  accomplish  the  task  quite  easily.  Now 
suppose  that  you  have  been  told  that  you  must  walk 
along  something  equally  rigid  and  of  the  same  width 
at  a  height  of  several  hundreds  of  feet  above  the 
ground.  You  will  almost  certainly  fall  off.  What 
has  happened  is  that  your  horror  of  falling  off  has 
made  the  spontaneous  autosuggestion  of  the  fall  so 
strong  that  you  have  not  been  able  to  prevent  your 
mind  from  realising  it.  You  will  also  find,  under  these 
conditions,  that  the  harder  you  try  to  prevent  your¬ 
self  from  falling  off,  the  more  certainly  you  will  do  so. 
Your  only  chance  of  performing  the  task  successfully 
is  to  adopt  a  method  which  reduces  to  a  minimum 
both  your  fear  of  a  fall  and  your  voluntary  effort  to 


52 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


keep  on  the  plank;  in  other  words,  you  must  think 
neither  about  the  height  nor  about  the  effort  neces¬ 
sary  to  keep  on  the  plank,  but  only  about  getting  to 
the  other  end. 

The  attraction  of  certain  kinds  of  sin  is  also  of  the 
nature  of  a  spontaneous  autosuggestion.  The  Law  of 
Reversed  Effort  does  not,  of  course,  mean  that  mere 
relaxation  of  effort  is  a  method  of  escaping  from  the 
power  of  sin.  What  is  meant  is  that  the  strength 
of  the  autosuggestion  is  increased  by  increased  horror 
of  the  sin,  and  that  the  kind  of  effort  which  consists  of 
a  direct  assault  on  the  sin  itself  is  not  an  effective  way 
of  overcoming  the  autosuggestion.  Other  kinds  of 
effort  (as,  for  example,  the  effort  towards  virtue,  or 
the  effort  to  practise  the  reflective  autosuggestion  of 
the  new  Nancy  school,  which  will  be  discussed  in  a 
later  chapter)  may  be  found  to  be  successful. 

The  psychological  mechanism  which  is  here  at  work 
is  no  new  discovery  of  the  twentieth  century,  and  the 
following  is  a  very  early  example  of  its  recognition 
as  a  factor  which  must  be  reckoned  with  in  the  moral 
life.  In  the  records  of  the  Egyptian  Fathers,  the  story 
is  told  of  how  one  Father  consulted  the  blessed  man 
Pachomius  about  his  temptations,  which  were  of  such 
violence  that  he  felt  disposed  to  give  up  the  life  of  the 
desert  and  to  return  to  the  world.  Pachomius  replied 
that  this  temptation  had  fallen  upon  the  other  by  his 
strenuousness,  and  described  how  he  himself  had  spent 
long  years  in  struggling  against  similar  temptations, 
until  a  conviction  that  the  temptations  were  sent  to 
him  to  deliver  him  from  excessive  self-confidence  made 
him  cease  to  have  anxious  care  about  them.  He  then 
continued  in  peace  from  this  struggle  to  the  end  of 
his  days ;  this  particular  devil  seeing  that  he  had  ceased 


THE  MORAL  ELEMENT  53 

to  meditate  about  the  matter  never  again  approached 
him.1 

If  we  wish  to  study  an  example  of  a  person  in  whom 
the  conviction  of  sin  became  so  strong  as  to  cease  to 
have  moral  usefulness  and  to  become  little  more  than 
a  mental  disease,  we  may  find  one  in  that  sad  account 
of  years  of  morbid  preoccupation  with  his  sins  which 
Bunyan  gives  in  Grace  Abounding.  From  his  child¬ 
hood,  he  says  that  he  had  few  equals  for  cursing,  swear¬ 
ing,  lying  and  blaspheming.  But  even  at  these  tender 
years  he  was  frightened  by  fearful  dreams  and  visions, 
and  by  apprehensions  of  Devils,  and  thoughts  of  the 
Day  of  Judgment  and  the  torments  of  hell-fire.  Soon 
after  his  marriage  he  began  to  go  to  church,  but  was 
still  not  sensible  of  the  danger  and  evil  of  sin.  But 
after  a  sermon  on  the  evil  of  Sabbath  breaking,  he 
heard  a  voice  while  he  was  playing  tip-cat  on  a  Sun¬ 
day  which  said  “Wilt  thou  leave  thy  sins  and  go  to 
Heaven,  or  have  thy  sins  and  go  to  Hell?”  But  the 
thought  of  the  grievousness  of  his  many  sins  made  his 
heart  sink  in  despair,  for  he  was  convinced  that  it  was 
too  late  for  him  to  hope  for  forgiveness.  So  he  made  up 
his  mind  to  fill  his  belly  with  the  delicates  of  sin,  and 
went  on  in  sin  with  great  greediness  of  mind,  still 
grudging  that  he  could  not  be  so  satisfied  with  it  as 
he  would.  But  after  about  a  month  a  rebuke  for  the 
violence  of  his  cursing  and  swearing  from  an  ungodly 
woman  made  him  ashamed,  and  he  gave  up  the  habit. 
Later,  under  the  influence  of  a  poor  man  wTho  made 
profession  of  religion,  he  reformed  his  words  and  life, 
and  his  obvious  reform  made  his  neighbours  take  him 
for  a  very  godly  man,  although  he  says  that  he  knew 

1  The  Paradise  of  the  Fathers,  translation  by  Wallis  Budge,  i.  130 

and  131. 


54  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

neither  Christ,  nor  Grace,  nor  Faith,  nor  Hope.  Now 
he  had  great  peace  in  his  conscience  and  thought  God 
must  be  pleased  with  him. 

This  condition  lasted  until  he  heard  some  poor 
women  at  Bedford  talking  about  religion.  These  spoke 
of  a  new  birth,  and  of  the  filthiness  and  insufficiency 
of  their  own  righteousness.  At  this  Bunyan’s  heart 
began  to  shake,  for  he  knew  nothing  of  the  new  birth, 
and  had  not  taken  any  notice  of  the  temptations  in 
thought  about  wdiich  the  women  were  concerned.  He 
began  to  be  doubtful  whether  or  not  he  had  faith,  and 
his  soul  became  assaulted  by  doubts  about  his  future 
happiness,  especially  whether  he  was  elected,  or 
whether  the  Day  of  Grace  w7as  already  past.  He  alter¬ 
nated  between  such  depressions  when  he  was  ready  to 
sink  where  he  w7ent  with  faintness  in  his  mind,  and 
similar  periods  of  elation  when  he  was  obsessed  with 
comforting  words  from  Scripture.  For  years,  however, 
the  depressed  condition  predominated,  although  his 
conscience  w7as  so  tender  that  he  durst  not  take  a  pin 
or  stick  though  but  so  big  as  a  straw.  Troubled,  and 
tossed,  and  afflicted  with  the  sight  and  sense  and  terror 
of  his  own  wickedness,  he  was  also  afraid  that  this 
trouble  might  pass  away  from  him  and  that  he  might 
lose  his  sense  of  guilt  without  remission  of  his  sins. 
After  a  period  of  unusual  peace,  he  became  obsessed 
with  the  thought  “Sell  Christ,  for  this,  sell  him  for 
that.”  He  resisted  for  a  long  time,  saying:  “I  will 
not,  I  will  not ;  no,  not  for  thousands  of  worlds” ;  until 
suddenly  he  felt  the  thought  pass  through  his  mind, 
“Let  him  go,  if  he  will.”  Now  he  was  convinced  that 
he  had  committed  the  unforgivable  sin,  and  a  godly 
man  to  whom  he  confessed  the  matter  agreed  that  he 
probably  had.  For  two  years  nothing  could  occupy 
his  mind  but  damnation  and  the  expectation  of  damna- 


THE  MORAL  ELEMENT 


55 


tion.  Later,  occasional  periods  of  peace  came  when 
comforting  texts  remained  with  him  for  a  time.  These 
became  longer  until  a  study  of  Scripture  convinced 
him  that  his  was  not  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost, 
and  that  salvation  came  by  the  righteousness  of  Christ. 
After  this  time,  comfort  and  peace  were  his  usual  state, 
and  the  periods  of  depression  were  only  occasional. 

Professor  Pratt 1  considers  that  Bunyan’s  struggle 
was  altogether  without  moral  significance.  Even  ad¬ 
miration  for  Bunyan’s  later  heroic  struggle  against 
persecution  cannot  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  this  judg¬ 
ment  is  correct.  His  moral  reform  came  before  and 
was  independent  of  this  mental  conflict  ;  nor  does  the 
latter  seem  to  have  been  connected  with  any  enrich¬ 
ment  of  his  devotional  life.  The  struggle  was  not 
against  any  real  moral  evil.  Such  evil  as  Bunyan  was 
struggling  against — the  obsession  by  anti-religious 
thoughts — seems  clearly  to  have  been  intensified  by  the 
struggle.  We  must  remember  also  that  it  is  only  be¬ 
cause  Bunyan  succeeded  in  emerging  from  this  un¬ 
healthy  condition  of  mental  pain  and  of  morbid  pre¬ 
occupation  about  his  own  damnation,  and  became  a 
great  religious  personality,  that  we  have  any  record 
of  the  obsessions  at  all.  How  many  weak  souls  were 
driven  by  the  threats  of  hell-fire  and  thunders  against 
the  filthiness  of  human  righteousness,  to  despair  and 
madness  or  vice,  we  do  not  know. 

We  may  now  turn  to  an  example  of  the  other  ex¬ 
treme,  and  look  at  the  life  of  a  religious  person  in 
whom  the  moral  element  seems  to  have  been  entirely 
undeveloped.  The  life  I  will  take  is  the  wTell-known 
one  of  Benvenuto  Cellini.  Cellini  was  an  intensely 
devout  person;  he  lived  in  an  atmosphere  of  exalted 
religious  emotion.  Yet  his  life  was  one  of  profligacy 

1  The  Religious  Consciousness  (New  York,  1920). 


56 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


and  murder,  lived  without  any  consciousness  of  incon¬ 
sistency.  His  religion  meant  nothing  to  his  morality. 
He  could  murder  his  enemy  in  cold  blood  just  as  he 
was  leaving  Mass  filled  with  beautiful  religious  emo¬ 
tions.  In  prison,  he  was  sustained  with  an  uplifting 
sense  of  the  divine ’favour,  and  records  that  for  ever 
afterwards  he  had  an  aureole  of  glory  on  his  head. 

A  practical  problem  which  confronts  religion  is  the 
necessity  for  striking  a  compromise  between  these  two 
extremes.  Clearly,  if  the  sense  of  sin  is  absent,  im¬ 
morality  must  be  expected;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
not  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  problem  so  to  in¬ 
tensify  the  sense  of  guilt  that  it  becomes  morbid.  Re¬ 
ligion  wants  to  prevent  its  followers  from  becoming 
Cellinis,  without  making  them  into  Bunyans.  This 
problem  is  to  some  extent  solved  by  the  Catholic  prac¬ 
tice  of  auricular  confession  (which  exists  also  in  some 
form  or  other  in  very  many  Protestant  bodies).  Simply 
on  the  psychological  level,  the  value  of  confession 
appears  to  lie  in  the  fact  that  it  maintains  a  predomi¬ 
nantly  healthy-minded  attitude  towards  sin,  as  well  as 
providing  a  disciplinary  remedy  against  it.  It  may,  of 
course,  be  disputed  how  far  it  is  successful  in  this,  but  it 
certainly  succeeds  in  some  measure,  and  its  effective  re¬ 
placement  is  a  real  problem  in  applied  psychology  for 
those  forms  of  religion  which  have  dispensed  with  it. 

This  view  of  the  psychological  value  of  confession  is 
confirmed  by  Professor  Raymond  and  M.  P.  Janet  who 
say: 

Regular  Confession  might  have  been  instituted  by 
some  mental  specialists  of  genius  as  the  best  means  of 
treating  the  victims  of  obsession.  Where  is  the  man 
or  woman  who  does  not  pass  through  periods  of  de¬ 
pression  and  bitterness?  Between  the  extremes  of 


THE  MORAL  ELEMENT 


57 


morbid  obsession  and  that  state  of  anxiousness  which 
is  fully  justified  by  many  of  the  circumstances  of  life 
there  are  a  good  many  intermediary  stages.  Confession 
acts  upon  all  these  states  of  despondency  like  a  heal¬ 
ing  balm  to  pacify  troubles  and  quicken  dying  hopes. 
The  abandonment  of  Confession  may  easily  lead  to  a 
condition  of  anxious  unrest.1 

I  do  not,  of  course,  wish  to  pretend  to  settle  the 
dispute  between  the  defenders  and  the  critics  of  the 
practical  value  of  confession.  It  is  my  purpose  only  to 
point  out  the  kind  of  problem  in  applied  psychology 
which  is  involved.  The  mere  opening  of  moral  conflicts 
to  another  person  is  often  sufficient  to  prevent  them 
from  becoming  the  source  of  morbid  obsessions  like 
those  of  Bunvan.  We  mav  notice  here  an  interesting 
observation  which  illustrates  this  fact.  Amongst 
melancholic  asylum  patients  the  obsession  that  they 
have  committed  the  unpardonable  sin  and  are  there¬ 
fore  for  ever  cut  off  from  the  hope  of  God’s  forgiveness 
is  very  common.  Yet  the  authors  of  the  Dictionary  of 
Psychological  Medicine  state  that  they  have  only  met 
with  one  patient  suffering  from  this  obsession  who  was 
a  Catholic;  all  the  others  were  Protestants.  There  is 
little  doubt  that  these  facts  are  important,  but  it  is  im¬ 
possible  to  make  a  fair  inference  from  them  unless  we 
take  into  account  also  those  cases  of  persons  to  whom 
confession  must  have  been  habitual  who  nevertheless 
suffered  from  scruples  which  remind  us  of  the  obses¬ 
sions  of  Bunyan.  Such  a  case,  for  example,  was  St  Al¬ 
phonse  Liguori.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  further  impartial 
observations  may  throw  additional  light  on  this  ques- 
tion. 

1  Les  Obsessions  et  les  Neurasthenics,  p.  707.  Paris;  quoted  in 
Spiritual  Director  and  Physician,  by  V.  Raymond,  0.  P.  English 
translation,  p.  35. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT  IN 
RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

The  next  kind  of  experience  which  we  must  discuss  as 
a  root  of  belief  in  God  is  that  made  up  of  the  moods, 
emotions  and  feeling  states  which  we  have  called  the 
affective  root  (or  feeling  root )  of  religious  belief.  The 
name  mystical  has  also  sometimes  been  applied  to  it.  I 
have  rejected  that  name  because  I  prefer  to  follow  the 
more  usual  custom  of  limiting  the  word  mystical  to  ex¬ 
periences  which  are  definitely  abnormal  in  the  sense 
that  they  do  not  occur  to  the  ordinary  religious  person. 
Everyone  has  a  certain  number  of  emotional  experi¬ 
ences  in  connection  with  his  religion.  To  most  religious 
people  there  are  times  at  which  these  experiences  are 
intense  and  are  yet  obviously  not  different  in  kind  from 
the  less  intense  experiences  of  their  ordinary  religious 
lives.  At  the  same  time,  there  are  a  few  persons  to 
whom  subjective  religious  experiences  occur  with  un¬ 
usual  strength  and  constancy,  and  who  have  experi¬ 
ences  which  are  remarkably  similar  amongst  them¬ 
selves  but  different  from  those  of  ordinary  people. 
These  are  the  mystics,  who  must  be  treated  in  more 
detail  in  a  later  chapter. 

For  the  purpose  of  description  we  may  make  a  pre¬ 
liminary  distinction  between  those  experiences  which 
seem  to  occur  apart  from  religious  belief  and  tend  to 
result  in  it,  and  those  which  accompany  religious  prac- 

58 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT  59 

tices  and  may  confirm  and  enrich  previously  held 
beliefs. 

Some  of  the  emotional  experiences  connected  with  the 
beauty  of  nature  which  were  described  in  the  last  chap¬ 
ter  might  equally  well  have  been  considered  here  as 
examples  of  religious  experience  of  the  first  kind  (those 
which  tend  to  result  in  religious  belief),  for  example, 
Thoreau’s  feeling  of  a  prevailing  friendliness  in  the 
sights  and  sounds  around  his  lonely  dwelling.  Many 
examples  of  this  kind  of  experience  are  to  be  found  in 
the  chapter  on  “The  Reality  of  the  LTnseen”  in  William 
James’s  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience.  I  will  quote 
one  of  them,  an  account  written  by  a  man  aged  twenty- 
seven. 

I  have  on  a  number  of  occasions  felt  that  I  had  en¬ 
joyed  a  period  of  intimate  communion  with  the  divine. 
These  meetings  came  unasked  and  unexpected,  and 
seemed  to  consist  merely  in  the  temporary  obliteration 
of  the  conventionalities  which  usually  surround  and 
cover  my  life.  .  .  .  Once  it  was  when  from  the  summit 
of  a  high  mountain  I  looked  over  a  gashed  and  corru¬ 
gated  landscape  extending  to  a  long  convex  of  ocean 
that  ascended  to  the  horizon,  and  again  from  the  same 
point  when  I  could  see  nothing  beneath  me  but  a 
boundless  expanse  of  white  cloud,  on  the  blown  surface 
of  which  a  few  high  peaks,  including  the  one  I  was 
on,  seemed  plunging  about  as  if  they  were  dragging 
at  their  anchors.  What  I  felt  on  these  occasions  was 
a  temporary  loss  of  my  own  identity,  accompanied  by 
an  illumination  which  revealed  to  me  a  deeper  signifi¬ 
cance  than  I  had  been  wont  to  attach  to  life.  It  is  in 
this  that  I  find  my  justification  for  saying  that  I  have 
enjoyed  communication  with  God.  Of  course,  the 
absence  of  such  a  being  as  this  would  be  chaos.  I  can¬ 
not  conceive  of  life  without  its  presence. 


60 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


We  may  notice  the  characters  of  the  experience  as 
they  are  here  described:  the  sense  of  an  intimate  per¬ 
vading  presence,  the  sense  of  a  deepened  significance  in 
life  and  the  sense  of  a  loss  of  identity.  These  are  marks 
of  such  an  experience  which,  we  shall  find,  tend  to 
recur. 

The  first  two  of  these  feelings  need  no  particular 
elucidation.  They  have  probably  in  some  measure 
fallen  within  the  experience  of  all  of  us.  But  we  may 
feel  inclined  to  ask  what  such  writers  mean  when  they 
speak  of  a  feeling  of  the  loss  of  their  identity.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  a  future  account  will  describe  apparently 
the  opposite  experience — ‘an  intense  quickening  of  the 
sense  of  personality.’  Now  the  sense  of  identity  or  self- 
consciousness  is  a  result  of  the  fact  that  our  experi¬ 
encing  and  enjoying  are  accompanied  by  the  idea  of  the 
self  which  is  experiencing  and  enjoying.  It  is  usual  in 
psychological  text-books  to  say  that  the  experience  of 
animals  is  not  so  accompanied.  If  that  is  the  case,  they 
have  no  sense  of  their  own  identities,  and  the  words  I 
and  me  have  no  meaning  for  them.  It  is  clear,  moreover, 
that  the  extent  to  which  in  human  beings  an  experience 
is  consciously  accompanied  by  the  idea  of  the  experi¬ 
encing  self  is  very  variable.  An  absorbed  spectator  at  a 
football  match,  an  artist  engrossed  in  the  contemplation 
or  the  execution  of  a  work  of  art,  or  a  nature-lover  lost 
in  the  beauty  of  a  sunset,  all  tend  to  lose,  at  least  in 
part,  even  the  vaguest  consciousness  of  themselves.  The 
intense  absorption  in  any  experience  of  things  outside 
is  accompanied  by  a  partial  loss  of  the  sense  of  identity 
which  is  apparent  to  introspection  when  the  period  of 
intense  absorption  is  over.  Possibly  the  sense  of  lost 
identity  described  in  these  forms  of  religious  experience 
means  simply  that  the  experience  makes  an  even  greater 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT 


61 


appeal  of  the  same  kind  to  spontaneous  attention  than 
the  football  match  to  the  lover  of  football  and  the  work 
of  art  to  the  artist.  If  this  explanation  be  the  true  one, 
it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  in  the  experience  of 
Prince  Muishkin,  which  we  shall  describe  later,  where  a 
deepening  of  the  sense  of  personality  is  spoken  of,  this 
follows  a  state  of  absent-mindedness  in  which  attention 
had  become  detached  from  the  experience  of  the  ex¬ 
ternal  world. 

Experiences  of  the  kind  we  are  describing  are  not  al¬ 
ways,  of  course,  intellectualised  by  a  belief  in  God.  The 
theistic  interpretation  may  be  rejected  by  the  mind  for 
other  reasons;  because  of  other  experiences  which  clash 
with  it,  or  on  intellectual  grounds.  Swinburne,  for 
example,  seems  to  be  describing  such  an  experience  in 
the  poem  already  quoted.  He  has  a  sense  of  a  pervading 
presence — “The  whole  wood  feels  thee,  the  whole  air 
fears  thee” ;  he  feels  a  loss  of  his  own  identity — “naught 
is  all,  as  am  I  but  a  dream  of  thee.”  Other  experiences, 
however,  lead  him  to  reject  the  belief  in  God. 

An  odd  case  of  similar  experience  is  found  in  what  is 
called  the  anaesthetic  revelation  about  which  a  good 
deal  has  been  written  by  Air  Blood.  This  is  a  conviction 
felt  often  under  an  anaesthetic  that  one  has  grasped  the 
secret  of  the  universe.  J.  A.  Symonds  says  of  such  an 
experience : 

Only  think  of  it.  To  have  felt  for  that  long  dateless 
ecstasy  of  vision  the  very  God,  in  all  purity  and  ten¬ 
derness  and  truth  and  absolute  love,  and  then  to  find 
that  I  had  after  all  had  no  revelation,  but  that  I  had 
been  tricked  by  the  abnormal  excitement  of  my  brain. 

Blood  makes  this  revelation  the  moral  sustenance  of 
his  fife.  He  says : 


62 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


I  know — as  having  known — the  meaning  of  Existence : 
the  sane  centre  of  the  universe — at  once  the  wonder 
and  the  assurance  of  the  soul — for  which  the  speech 
of  reason  has  as  yet  no  name  but  the  Anaesthetic  reve¬ 
lation.1 

But  (and  this  is  a  point  which  is  not  mentioned  by 
the  writers  on  the  anaesthetic  revelation)  the  secret  of 
the  universe  revealed  in  this  way  may  be  a  terrible  one. 
This  seems  to  be  particularly  liable  to  be  the  case  when 
the  anaesthesia  is  light  and  the  operation  painful.  A 
mental  specialist  has  told  me  that  he  has  often  had  an 
experience  of  a  terrible  secret  of  the  universe  in  this 
way,  and  that  once  after  he  had  undergone  an  operation 
under  anaesthetic  he  found  that  the  experience  recurred 
to  him  later.  To  him  the  world  appeared  not  as  founded 
on  a  transcendent  reality,  but  as  something  horribly, 
inexpressibly  unreal. 

A  case  has  been  brought  to  my  notice  in  which  an 
experience  similar  to  the  anaesthetic  revelation  seems 
to  have  been  passed  through  in  the  delirium  of  a  death¬ 
bed.  The  subject  was  a  metaphysician  and  a  priest- 
The  period  before  his  death  is  thus  described : 

I  was  with  him  shortly  before  his  death.  He  was 
then  alternately  clear  and  wandering.  In  his  wander¬ 
ing  he  tried  again  and  again  to  make  clear  to  me 
something  that  he  had  learned  about  the  attributes  of 
God,  especially  about  the  Eternity  of  God.  “The  Ever¬ 
lasting  Now” — this  he  repeated  several  times  and  then 
tried  to  explain  it  but  tried  in  vain  to  find  the  words 
he  wTanted.  He  looked  distressed  at  this,  and  also 
looked  at  me  with  distress  because  I  could  not  follow 
him.  These  wanderings  lasted  but  a  short  time,  and 
then  a  change  would  come  over  his  eyes  and  he  would 

1  Quoted  from  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT 


63 


ask  me  if  he  had  said  anything  he  ought  not  to  have 
said,  and  for  awhile  was  completely  self-possessed,  re¬ 
sponding  to  what  I  said,  or  joining  in  the  prayers,  but 
never  referring  to  the  subjects  which  occupied  him  in 
his  delirium.  Then  he  would  lapse  again  into  inco¬ 
herent  words  about  the  Eternity  of  God. 

It  is  not  possible  to  discuss  all  the  moods  of  exaltation 
accompanying  abnormal  bodily  or  mental  conditions 
which  have  made  occasional  contributions  to  religion. 
There  are,  however,  two  which  I  wish  to  mention  quite 
shortly.  These  are  the  states  of  mind  which  result  from 
the  taking  of  hashish,  and  the  exalted  emotions  which 
apparently  sometimes  occur  immediately  before  an 
epileptic  attack. 

Hashish  has  been  used  in  the  East  as  a  means  of 
securing  such  moods.  Its  effects  have  often  been  de¬ 
scribed  by  users  of  the  drug.  It  is  said  to  produce  a 
succession  of  intense  visions,  often  of  great  beauty. 
These  are  followed  by  a  period  in  which  the  things  of 
the  outside  world  are  perceived  but  with  an  enormously 
exaggerated  sense  of  space  and  time.  Every  second 
seems  to  be  hours  long,  and  near  objects  seem  to  be 
great  distances  away.  This  extension  of  space  gives  an 
impression  of  vastness  in  ordinary  objects;  small  rooms 
seem  to  have  the  dimensions  of  banqueting  halls.  This 
sense  of  being  surrounded  by  huge  spaces  seems  to  add 
to  the  mental  exaltation  which  accompanies  the  taking 
of  this  drug. 

As  an  example  of  an  exalted  state  of  mind  before  an 
epileptic  fit,  I  am  taking  the  account  given  by  Dostoieff- 
sky  in  The  Idiot.  You  will  remember  that  Dostoieffsky 
was  himself  an  epileptic,  so  it  is  to  be  supposed  that  he 
is  describing  the  attack  from  personal  experience.  Such 
emotional  accompaniments  of  epilepsy  do  not,  however, 


64  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

appear  to  be  common.  Speaking  of  the  epileptic  Prince 
Muishkin,  he  says: 

He  remembered  that  during  his  epileptic  fits,  or 
rather  immediately  preceding  them,  he  had  always  ex¬ 
perienced  a  moment  or  two  when  his  whole  heart,  and 
mind,  and  body  seemed  to  wake  up  to  vigour  and  light ; 
when  he  became  filled  with  joy  and  hope,  and  all  his 
anxieties  seemed  to  be  swept  away  for  ever;  these 
moments  were  but  presentiments,  as  it  were,  of  the 
one  final  second  (it  was  never  more  than  a  second) 
in  w7hich  the  fit  came  upon  him.  That  second,  of 
course,  was  inexpressible.  When  his  attack  was  over, 
and  the  prince  reflected  on  his  symptoms,  he  used  to 
say  to  himself:  “These  moments,  short  as  they  are, 
when  I  feel  such  extreme  consciousness  of  myself,  and 
consequently  more  of  life  than  at  other  times,  are  due 
only  to  the  disease — to  the  sudden  rupture  of  normal 
conditions.  Therefore  they  are  not  really  a  higher 
kind  of  life,  but  a  lower.”  This  reasoning,  however, 
seemed  to  end  in  a  paradox,  and  lead  to  the  further 
consideration:  “What  matter  though  it  be  only  a  dis¬ 
ease,  an  abnormal  tension  of  the  brain,  if  when  I 
recall  and  analyze  the  moment,  it  seems  to  have  been 
one  of  harmony  and  beauty  in  the  highest  degree — an 
instant  of  deepest  sensation,  overflowing  with  un¬ 
bounded  joy  and  rapture,  ecstatic  devotion,  and  com- 
pletest  life?”  .  .  .  These  instants  were  characterized 
— to  define  it  in  a  word — by  an  intense  quickening  of 
the  sense  of  personality.  Since  in  the  last  conscious 
moment  preceding  the  attack,  he  could  say  to  himself, 
with  full  understanding  of  his  words:  “I  would  give 
my  whole  life  for  this  one  instant,”  then  doubtless  to 
him  it  really  was  worth  a  lifetime.  For  the  rest,  he 
thought  the  dialectical  part  of  his  argument  of  little 
worth ;  he  saw  only  too  clearly  that  the  result  of  these 
ecstatic  moments  was  stupefaction,  mental  darkness, 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT 


65 


idiocy.  No  argument  was  possible  on  that  point.  His 
conclusion,  his  estimate  of  the  “moment,”  doubtless 
contained  some  error,  yet  the  reality  of  the  sensation 
troubled  him.  What  more  unanswerable  than  a  fact? 
And  this  fact  had  occurred.  The  prince  had  confessed 
unreservedly  to  himself  that  the  feeling  of  intense 
beatitude  in  that  crowded  moment  made  the  moment 
worth  a  lifetime. 

He  adds  that  it  was  no  doubt  to  such  a  moment  that 
the  epileptic  Mahomet  refers  when  he  says  that  he 
visited  all  the  dwellings  of  Allah,  in  less  time  than  was 
needed  to  empty  a  pitcher  of  water. 

Such  experiences  as  these,  however,  have  been  used 
but  rarely  in  the  service  of  religion.  They  must  always 
awaken  the  doubt  whether  they  are  not  mere  tricks  of 
the  imagination  which  owe  their  origin  and  have  their 
full  explanation  in  a  diseased  state  of  the  brain,  or 
whether  (as  may  quite  consistently  be  maintained  by 
those  who  accept  their  authority)  a  disordered  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  mind  is  a  possible  condition  for  a  real  insight 
into  the  highest  reality.  A  set  of  experiences  which 
belong  more  properly  to  the  religious  life  in  its  early 
stages  are  the  emotional  states  which  lead  up  to  adoles¬ 
cent  conversion.  Adolescent  conversion  will  be  treated 
in  greater  detail  in  a  later  chapter,  so  these  emotional 
states  will  be  mentioned  now  quite  shortly. 

Starbuck  made  elaborate  statistical  investigations 
into  these  facts  and  describes  the  stages  preceding  con¬ 
version  as:  a  sense  of  incompleteness  and  imperfection; 
brooding,  depression,  introspection  and  a  sense  of  sin; 
anxiety  about  the  future  life  and  distress  over  doubts. 
These  are  followed  after  conversion  by  a  happy  relief,  a 
sense  of  pardon  and  of  certainty.  These  mental  states 
have  been  schematised  to  an  extraordinary  extent  by 


66 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


him  in  his  Psychology  of  Religion.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  a  great  part  of  his  account  of  the  adolescent  conver¬ 
sion  is  valuable,  but  he  has  failed  to  recognise  how  much 
of  what  he  describes  is  merely  the  result  of  suggestion, 
and  how  much  of  the  uniformity  of  his  results  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  his  material  is  almost  entirely  taken  from  a 
particular  type  of  American  Protestantism,  which  had 
these  conventional  expectations  about  conversion.  His 
neglect  of  this  matter  makes  him  take  his  classifications 
much  more  seriously  than  they  deserve,  and  makes  it 
necessary  to  read  his  book  with  a  good  deal  of  caution. 
My  purpose  in  alluding  here  to  adolescent  conversion  is 
principally  in  order  to  draw  attention  to  those  emo¬ 
tional  experiences  preceding  religion  which  contain  the 
element  of  incompleteness. 

There  are  three  kinds  of  religious  experience  which 
resemble  one  another  in  being  of  the  nature  of  a  relief 
from  a  painful  mental  state.  These  are :  the  sense  of  the 
forgiveness  of  sins,  the  sense  of  felt  certainty  in  belief, 
and  the  sense  of  permanence  and  stability  in  the  divine. 
These  are  related  to  three  painful  mental  states.  The 
sense  of  sin,  with  its  accompaniment  of  what  Professor 
McDougall  calls  negative  self-feeling ,  is  a  mental  state 
with  a  strongly  painful  feeling-tone.  In  the  last  chapter, 
we  saw  an  example  in  which  this  painful  state  attained 
terrible  intensity  in  the  mind  of  Bunyan.  When  this 
state  is  removed  by  the  conviction  of  forgiveness  re¬ 
ceived  in  answer  to  prayer,  in  a  conversion  experience, 
or  when  absolution  is  received  from  a  priest,  its  relief 
is  the  mental  experience  called  the  forgiveness  of  sins. 
Intellectual  uncertainty  is  also  a  painful  mental  state. 
This  will  be  seen  later  to  be  a  fact  of  importance  in  the 
study  of  conversion.  The  pleasure  accompanying  the 
change  from  doubt  to  a  conviction  of  certainty  may  be 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT 


67 


very  strong.  In  a  vivid  account  of  his  conversion  experi¬ 
ences  written  on  parchment  and  worn  over  his  heart, 
Pascal  has  the  following  line:  “Certitude,  joie,  certi¬ 
tude,  sentiment,  vue,  joie,”  and  a  similar  mention  of  the 
joy  of  certainty  is  frequently  found  in  other  writings  of 
the  same  kind.  Last,  there  is  the  sense  of  divine  sta¬ 
bility.  The  painful  emotional  state  of  wdiich  this  is  a 
relief  is  the  sadness  produced  by  the  impermanence  and 
transitoriness  of  all  that  we  value  on  earth,  of  human 
life  and  of  human  affection.  Relief  to  this  is  given  by 
the  thought  of  the  permanence  and  reality  found  in  the 
idea  of  God. 

In  each  of  these  mental  attitudes,  a  pleasurable  affect 
is  produced,  because  a  mental  need  is  supplied,  the  lack 
of  which  had  previously  been  painful  to  the  mind. 

The  affective  state  called  the  sense  of  the  'presence  of 
God  does  not  differ  from  the  sense  of  a  presence  de¬ 
scribed  earlier  in  this  chapter  as  a  constituent  of  the 
vague  emotional  experiences  which  come  before  relig¬ 
ious  belief,  except  in  the  fact  that  it  is  more  specifically 
provided  with  an  object.  The  following  account  from 
The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience  is  a  typical  one: 

I  have  the  sense  of  a  presence,  strong  and  at  the 
same  time  soothing,  which  hovers  over  me.  Sometimes 
it  seems  to  enwrap  me  with  sustaining  arms.1 

The  characteristic  experience  of  mystical  prayer 
which  is  generally  called  contemplation  is  also  a  sense  of 
God’s  presence.  It  differs  from  these  non-mystical  ex¬ 
periences  of  the  same  kind,  however,  in  several  respects. 
The  most  important  of  these  are:  the  fact  that  what  is 
felt  is  more  than  mere  presence,  it  is  something  more 


1  Op.  ext.  p.  72. 


68 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


like  possession ;  it  is  much  less  under  voluntary  control ; 
and  it  involves  suspension  of  the  power  to  perform  cer¬ 
tain  kinds  of  mental  activity.  The  characters  of  con¬ 
templation  will  be  discussed  in  more  detail  in  a  later 
chapter  devoted  to  mysticism. 

I  will  give  two  examples  of  contemplation ;  one  from 
a  Catholic,  the  other  from  a  Protestant  mystic.  St 
Teresa  says : 

In  the  prayer  of  union  the  soul  is  asleep,  fast  asleep, 
as  regards  the  world  and  itself:  in  fact,  during  the 
short  time  that  this  state  lasts  it  is  deprived  of  all 
feeling  whatever,  being  unable  to  think  on  any  sub¬ 
ject,  even  if  it  wished.  No  effort  is  needed  here  to 
suspend  the  thoughts,  if  the  soul  can  love — it  knows 
not  how,  nor  whom  it  loves,  nor  what  it  desires.  In 
fact,  it  has  died  entirely  to  this  world,  to  live  more 
truly  than  ever  in  God.1 

The  second  is  from  an  account  of  his  life  given  by 
Evan  Roberts,  the  Welsh  revivalist: 

One  Friday  night  last  spring,  when  praying  by  my 
bedside  before  retiring,  I  was  taken  up  into  a  great 
expanse  without  time  or  space — it  was  communion 
with  God.  Before  this  it  was  a  far-off  God  that  I  had. 
I  was  frightened  that  night  but  never  since.  .  .  .  xAiter 
that  I  was  awakened  every  night  a  little  after  one. 

.  .  .  From  that  time  I  was  taken  up  into  Divine  fel¬ 
lowship  for  about  four  hours.2 

The  practices  of  religion  have  also  their  accompani¬ 
ment  of  emotional  experience  without  which  they  would 
become  extraordinarily  empty  of  meaning.  The  com- 

1  The  Interior  Castle,  by  St  Teresa  (English  translation  by  the 
Benedictines  of  Stanbrook,  London,  1906),  5.  i.  3. 

2  Proceedings  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research ,  xix.  p.  80. 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT 


69 


ment  of  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England  attending  a 
ceremony  in  the  Greek  Church,  or  of  a  Greek  who  has 
found  his  way  into  an  Indian  temple,  will  probably  be 
the  same:  “This  is  mere  meaningless  ceremonial.”  The 
reason  for  this  judgment  is  that  in  each  case  the  ob¬ 
server  is  witnessing  the  practices  of  religion  without 
himself  feeling  the  emotional  accompaniment  which 
gives  them  significance  to  the  worshippers.  To  the  wor¬ 
shippers  themselves  they  are  never  merely  meaningless 
ceremonial,  they  are  rich  in  affective  significance.  In 
prayer,  a  sense  of  the  presence  of,  and  of  communication 
with  God  is  felt,  which  is  effective  in  removing  distress 
and  increasing  happiness.  While  the  litany  of  saints  is 
repeated,  the  worshipper  feels  himself  surrounded  by 
the  multitudes  he  is  invoking.  In  the  presence  of  the 
consecrated  sacrament,  the  believing  Catholic  has  a 
sense  of  the  presence  of  God  stronger  than  any  he 
experiences  at  other  times. 

Some  parts  of  the  religious  cult  seem  to  have  as  one  of 
their  ends  the  intensification  of  emotional  experiences. 
The  pomp  of  the  ritual  intensifies  the  emotions  of  awe 
which  are  felt  by  the  worshippers.  Posture  in  prayer 
has  its  effects  on  the  emotions.  The  position  of  kneeling 
is  not  merely  an  outward  symbol  of  submission;  it 
actually  tends  to  produce  the  emotional  attitude  of 
submission  in  the  mind  of  a  person  to  whom  it  is  such 
a  symbol.  Sacred  music  plainly  has  as  its  principal 
object  the  control  of  the  worshippers’  emotions.  One  of 
the  objects  of  meditation  is  to  facilitate  the  emotional 
response  to  the  objects  meditated  upon.  What  are 
called  acts  of  faith,  love,  etc.,  are  simple  autosugges¬ 
tions  which  are  intended  to  strengthen  the  feelings  of 
certainty  in  the  religious  belief  and  of  affection  towards 
the  object  of  religious  worship  respectively. 


70 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


The  affective  experiences  of  religion  have  attached  to 
them  the  same  danger  as  similar  experiences  of  secular 
life — the  danger  that  they  may  be  pursued  as  ends  in 
themselves,  and  lose  their  value  as  stimuli  to  action. 
This  is  what  is  called  sentimentalism.  We  may  remind 
ourselves  of  the  example  given  by  William  James  of  the 
Russian  lady  who  was  weeping  over  the  troubles  of 
fictitious  people  on  the  stage  while  her  coachman  was 
freezing  to  death  on  the  pavement  outside,  the  emotion 
of  sorrow  having  become  to  her  enjoyable  merely  as  a 
mental  state  and  no  longer  impelling  her  to  the  action 
of  relieving  distress.  In  just  the  same  way  there  is  a 
tendency  for  a  strongly  affective  religion  to  degenerate 
into  religious  sentimentalism.  Its  exalted  emotions 
cease  to  be  spurs  to  heroic  conduct  for  the  love  of  God. 
On  the  contrary,  the  soul  basks  in  its  pleasurable  emo¬ 
tions  like  a  cat  in  the  sun,  as  if  the  multiplication  of 
emotions  were  the  aim  of  its  religion;  with  the  result  at 
best  of  moral  weakness,  and  at  worst  of  moral  disaster. 
The  mystics  have  been  aware  of  the  danger  of  senti¬ 
mentalism.  “Lord,  lead  me  not  by  the  way  of  sensible 
consolations,”  is  their  constant  prayer. 

In  illustration  of  this  criticism  of  affective  religion,  I 
will  quote  a  typical  protest  against  religion  of  the  affec¬ 
tive  type  from  a  person  whose  religion  appears  to  be  of 
a  predominantly  ethical  character.  It  is  from  the  speech 
of  the  counsel  who  defended  Flaubert  in  the  action 
brought  against  him  in  connection  with  Madame 
Bovary: 

Je  ne  connais  rien  de  plus  utile  et  de  plus  necessaire 
que  le  sentiment  religieux  grave,  et  permettez-moi 
cTajouter,  severe. 

Je  veux  que  mes  enfants  comprennent  un  Dieu,  non 
pas  un  Dieu  dans  les  abstractions  du  pantheisme,  non, 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT 


71 


mais  un  etre  supreme  avec  lequel  ils  sont  en  rapport, 
vers  lequel  ils  s’elevent  pour  le  prier,  et  qui  en  meme 
temps  les  grandit  et  les  fortifie.  Cette  pensee-la,  .  .  . 
c’est  la  force  dans  les  mauvais  jours,  .  .  .  le  refuge,  ou 
mieux  encore,  la  force  des  faibles.  .  .  .  Mais  voici 
ou  commence  F alteration.  Pour  accommoder  la  re¬ 
ligion  a  toutes  les  natures,  on  fait  intervenir  toutes 
sortes  de  petites  choses,  chetives,  miserables,  mes- 
quines.  .  .  .  Elies  [the  young  girls  about  whom  he  is 
speaking]  se  font  alors  de  petites  religions  de  pratique, 
de  petites  devotions  de  tendresse,  d’ amour,  et  au  lieu 
d’avoir  dans  leur  ame  le  sentiment  de  Dieu,  le  senti¬ 
ment  du  devoir,  elles  s’abandonnent  a  des  revasseries, 
a  de  petites  pratiques,  a  de  petites  devotions.  Et  puis 
vient  la  poesie,  et  puis  viennent,  il  faut  bien  le  dire, 
mille  pensees  de  charite,  de  tendresse,  d’amour  mys¬ 
tique,  mille  formes  qui  trompent  les  jeunes  filles,  qui 
sensualisent  la  religion.  Ces  pauvres  enfants  naturelle- 
ment  credules  et  faibles  se  prennent  a  tout  cela,  a  la 
poesie,  a  la  revasserie,  au  lieu  de  s’attacher  a  quelque 
chose  de  raisonnable  et  de  severe.  D’ou  il  arrive  que 
vous  avez  beaucoup  de  femmes  fort  devotes,  qui  ne 
sont  pas  religieuses  du  tout.  Et  quand  le  vent  les 
pousse  hors  du  chemin  ou  elles  devrait  marcher,  au 
lieu  de  trouver  la  force,  elles  ne  trouvent  que  toute 
espece  de  sensualites  qui  les  egarent. 

Of  course,  the  speaker,  a  barrister,  is  very  much  over¬ 
stating  the  case  against  affective  religion.  But  what  he 
is  describing  are  real  dangers.  The  tendency  to  follow 
emotion  for  its  own  sake  and  not  as  an  incentive  to 
religious  action,  threatens  the  morality  of  those  who 
succumb  to  it. 

The  first  danger,  then,  threatening  a  religion  in  which 
the  affective  element  has  attained  an  exaggerated  im¬ 
portance  is  that  of  sentimentalism,  with  its  resultant 


72 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


moral  weakness.  There  is  secondly  a  tendency  to  in¬ 
tellectual  -weakness.  Exaggeratedly  affective  religion  is, 
of  course,  often  a  result  of  despair  of  the  intellect  as  a 
guide  to  truth.  Goethe,  speaking  through  Faust,  finds 
at  the  same  time  the  impossibility  of  a  satisfactory 
affirmation  of  the  being  of  God  in  intellectual  terms,  and 
of  a  denial  of  Him  in  terms  of  feeling : 

Wer  darf  ihn  nennen?  Und  wer  bekennen:  Ich  glaub’ 
ihn?  Wer  empfinden,  Und  sich  unterwinden  Zu  sagen: 
ich  glaub’  ihn  nicht?  Der  Allumfasser,  Der  Allerhal- 
ter,  .  .  .  Erfuir  davon  dein  Herz,  so  gross  es  ist,  Und 
wenn  du  ganz  in  dem  Gefiihle  selig  bist,  Nenn’  es  dann, 
wie  du  willst.1 

The  intellectualist  can,  of  course,  easily  make  such  a 
position  seem  to  be  weaker  than  it  really  is.  Expressed 
in  intellectual  terms,  and  attacked  by  intellectual 
methods,  it  seems  to  be  indefensible  indeed.  But  the 
real  point  of  the  position  of  reliance  on  feeling  is  that  it 
denies  the  claim  of  intellect  to  have  the  deciding  voice 
in  matters  of  belief,  and  claims  for  feeling  an  authority 
of  its  own  at  least  as  ultimate  as  that  of  reason.  At  the 
same  time,  it  is  open  to  the  serious  objection  that  in 
rejecting  the  rational  element  in  religious  belief,  religion 
of  the  affective  type  must  necessarily  be  weak  because 
it  is  deficient  in  one  element  which  plays  some  part  at 
least  in  the  constitution  of  the  beliefs  of  the  normally 
constituted  mind. 

To  this  type  also  belong  those  forms  of  religion  which 

1  Faust,  Pt  i,  Marthens  Garten.  “Who  can  name  Him?  Who 
thus  proclaim  Him:  I  believe  Him?  Who  that  hath  feeling  His 
bosom  stealing,  Can  say  I  believe  Him  not?  The  All-embracing, 
The  All-sustaining,  .  .  .  Great  though  it  be,  fill  thou  therefrom 
thine  heart,  And  when  in  the  feeling  wholly  blest  thou  art,  Call  it 
then  what  thou  wiltl”  (English  translation  by  A.  G.  Latham,  Lon¬ 
don,  1908). 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT 


73 


rest  largely  on  intuition,  on  the  subjective  feeling  of 
certainty — such  as  Quakerism.  I  will  quote  a  typical 
affirmation  of  faith  of  this  kind  from  a  thesis  called  De 
V Experience  Chretienne  by  Emile  Paradon,  quoted  by 
Professor  Leuba.  He  is  discussing  the  question  of 
whether  the  experiences  of  prayer  are  all  illusion,  due 
to  autosuggestion : 

.  .  .  it  becomes  evident  to  us  .  .  .  that  the  objections 
of  our  adversary  cannot  reach  us.  We  stand  on  two 
different  grounds,  and  so  we  doubt  if  he  will  ever  un¬ 
derstand  us,  but  he  cannot  shake  in  us  the  affirmations 
of  experience ;  namely,  that  we  feel  within  us  a  being 
that  is  not  ourselves;  we  see  born  within  us  new  ideas 
and  perceptions,  real  revelations  that  do  not  come  from 
ourselves. 

A  religion  thus  based  suffers  in  the  same  way  from 
the  disadvantages  resulting  from  the  rejection  of  the 
rational  element. 

This  seems  to  be  the  most  suitable  place  to  mention 
shortly  the  visions  and  locutions  wdiich  are  found  in  the 
religious  life.  These  are  largely  but  not  entirely  con¬ 
fined  to  those  whom  we  have  called  mystics  in  the  re¬ 
stricted  sense,  and  amongst  these  to  those  who  have 
reached  the  stage  of  ecstasy.  They  play  a  much  less  im¬ 
portant  part  in  mystical  thought  than  seems  generally 
to  be  supposed.  The  tendency  has  been,  on  the  whole, 
for  the  mystics  themselves  to  attach  slight  value  to 
visions  and  to  regard  them  as  methods  of  illumination 
too  open  to  the  danger  of  deception  to  be  considered  de¬ 
sirable.  What  has  made  them  take  such  a  prominent 
place  in  the  recorded  fives  of  the  Catholic  mystics  has 
been  the  naive  enthusiasm  of  their  biographers  for  the 
marvellous. 


74 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


Traditionally  these  experiences  have  been  divided 
into  three  classes.  The  first  are  exterior  visions  and 
locutions,  in  which  the  object  seen  or  heard  appears  to 
the  percipient  to  belong  to  the  outside  world.  The  sec¬ 
ond  may  be  called  imagined.1  In  these  the  percipient  has 
a  clear  image  of  what  he  sees  or  hears,  but  does  not 
suppose  it  to  belong  to  the  outside  world.  The  third  are 
intellectual  visions  and  locutions.  In  these  the  object  is 
stated  to  be  neither  seen  nor  heard,  but  there  is  an  inner 
feeling  of  a  presence  or  a  communication.  It  is  not 
generally  easy  to  make  out  from  a  narrative  whether  a 
vision  which  is  being  described  is  an  exterior  or  an 
imaginal  one,  unless  (as  rarely  happens)  the  person  to 
wThom  the  experience  has  occurred  is  interested  in 
drawing  the  distinction.  The  difference  between  them 
is  probably  perfectly  clear  in  all  cases  to  the  percipient 
himself.  It  seems  likely  that  most  of  the  visions  de¬ 
scribed  which  are  not  intellectual  are  of  the  imaginal 
kind,  and  that  exterior  visions  are  rare.  St  Teresa,  for 
example,  records  that  she  never  had  an  exterior  vision 
or  locution. 

A  typical  example  of  the  distinction  between  the 
account  given  of  an  exterior  and  imaginal  vision,  is  to  be 
found  in  a  recently  published  account  of  a  modern 
mystic : 

In  speaking  to  us  of  visions  of  Christ  seen,  and  words 
heard,  by  him  on  subsequent  occasions  when  in  a 
state  of  Ecstasy,  he  clearly  and  emphatically  distin¬ 
guished  the  vision  at  his  conversion,  when  he  saw 
Christ  with  his  bodily  eyes  and  heard  him  “with  these 

1  The  usual  name  for  this  class  has  been  imaginary.  This,  how¬ 
ever,  is  a  misleading  word,  since  in  English  it  suggests  an  irrelevant 
judgment  on  their  reality.  I  propose,  therefore,  to  substitute  the 
word  imaginal,  which  is  used  in  psychology  as  an  adjective  to 
describe  mental  facts  belonging  to  the  same  class  as  images. 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT  75 

ears/’  from  the  later  visions  when  he  saw  and  heard 
with  “spiritual”  sight  and  hearing.1 

The  following  is  a  description  of  an  intellectual  vision 
given  by  St  Teresa.  She  is  speaking  of  herself: 

She  was  conscious  of  His  [God]  being  at  her  right 
hand,  although  not  in  the  way  we  know  an  ordinary 
person  to  be  beside  us,  but  in  a  more  subtle  manner 
which  cannot  be  described.  This  Presence  is,  however, 
quite  as  evident  and  certain,  and  indeed  far  more  so, 
than  the  ordinary  presence  of  other  people  about  which 
we  may  be  deceived;  not  so  in  this,  for  it  brings  with 
it  graces  and  spiritual  effects  which  could  not  come 
from  melancholia.2 

The  order  in  which  the  different  classes  of  vision  have 
'  been  valued  has  been  the  opposite  of  the  order  in  which 
I  have  described  them.  Intellectual  visions  have  been 
considered  to  be  highly  trustworthy,  imaginal  visions 
less  so,  while  exterior  visions  have  been  regarded  with 
considerable  suspicion. 

Some  visions  were  supposed  to  be  delusions  of  the  evil 
one  even  when  they  took  a  religious  form,  and  it  was  be¬ 
cause  of  this  danger  that  exterior  visions  and  imaginal 
ones  w^ere  so  distrusted.  It  was  supposed  that  intel¬ 
lectual  visions  could  not  be  counterfeited  by  the  devil. 
In  addition  many  of  the  ecstatics  had  horrible  visions  of 
the  devil,  and  auditory  hallucinations  of  the  same  kind, 
as  well  as  suffering  from  physical  assaults  of  the  fiends. 
Diabolical  action  of  such  kind  has  received  attention 
from  French  medical  writers  on  this  subject. 

It  is  natural  to  compare  these  visions  and  locutions  of 
religion  with  similar  phenomena  of  ordinary  life.  It 
seems  probable  that  we  are  sometimes  dealing  with 

1  The  Sadhu,  by  Streeter  and  Appasamy  (London,  1921),  p.  8. 

2  The  Interior  Castle,  by  St  Teresa,  6.  vm.  4. 


76 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


appearances  which  occur  equally  outside  religion,  but 
wrhich  have  been  given  a  religious  colouring  by  the 
dominant  religious  interests  of  the  person  experiencing 
them,  as  well  as  with  phenomena  belonging  more  specif¬ 
ically  to  the  religious  life  itself.  Hallucinations  are  not 
very  common  amongst  sane  persons,  but  they  are  very 
common  accompaniments  of  some  forms  of  mental 
disease.  Statistical  investigation,  however,  suggests 
that  at  least  one  in  every  five  sane  persons  experiences 
a  fairly  vivid  hallucination  at  some  time  in  his  life. 
There  are  peculiar  hallucinations  found  amongst  sane 
persons,  which  are  caused  by  the  reflected  pain  of 
visceral  disease.  These  have  been  investigated  and 
described  by  Dr  Head.1  I  have  not  been  able  to  dis¬ 
cover  any  records  of  experiences  in  religion  which 
obviously  belong  to  this  class,  although  some  of  the 
diabolical  obsessions  of  the  sense  of  smell  may  do  so. 

The  distinction  between  exterior  and  imaginal  visions 
is  obviously  precisely  the  same  as  the  distinction  drawn 
in  psychology  between  hallucinations  and  pseudo-hallu¬ 
cinations.  Pseudo-hallucinations  are  those  which  the 
subject  does  not  mistake  for  external  objects,  as  he  does 
genuine  hallucinations.  It  is  often  assumed  without 
argument  in  books  on  religious  psychology  that  the 
persons  who  have  visions  are  those  with  strong  visual 
imagery,  who  mistook  their  images  for  reality.  It  has 
always  seemed  to  me  to  be  at  least  as  probable  that  they 
are  people  ordinarily  devoid  of  such  imagery,  who  are 
particularly  impressed  by  it  because  it  comes  only  under 
these  conditions.  St  Teresa  clearly  was  not  a  visualiser, 
for  she  complains  of  the  impossibility  of  picturing 
things  to  herself  in  meditation.  On  the  other  hand,  I 

1  “Mental  Changes  that  accompany  Visceral  Disease,”  by  Dr 
Henry  Head.  Brain,  1901. 


THE  AFFECTIVE  ELEMENT 


77 


have  found  good  visualisers  amongst  persons  who  have 
experienced  religious  visions.  We  must  wait  for  more 
evidence  before  it  is  possible  to  decide  this  question. 

Another  problem  in  connection  with  visions  which 
needs  experimental  investigation  by  a  sufficiently  self- 
sacrificing  experimental  psychologist  is  the  connection 
between  fasting  and  hallucinatory  appearances.  It  is 
generally  asserted  without  any  appeal  to  evidence  that 
one  of  the  objects  of  fasting  is  to  produce  religious 
visions.  That  may  be  the  case,  although  its  value  as  a 
means  of  self-discipline  is  probably  very  much  more 
important. 

Sadhu  Sundar  Singh  in  his  twenty-third  year  tried  to 
carry  out  a  forty  days’  fast  in  imitation  of  Christ: 

During  the  early  stages  of  the  fast  there  was  a  feel¬ 
ing  of  intense  burning  in  his  stomach  on  account  of 
lack  of  food  but  this  soon  passed  away.  In  the  course 
of  the  fast  he  saw  Christ;  not,  he  says,  as  at  his  con¬ 
version,  with  his  physical  eyes,  because  they  were  now 
dim  and  could  not  see  anything,  but  in  a  spiritual 
vision,  with  pierced  hands,  bleeding  feet  and  radiant 
face.  Throughout  the  whole  period  he  felt  in  himself 
a  remarkable  enrichment  of  that  sense  of  peace  and 
happiness  which  has  been  his  in  a  measure  ever  since 
he  became  a  Christian.  Indeed  so  great  was  this  sense 
that  he  had  no  temptation  whatever  to  give  up  the 
fast.  As  his  physical  powers  became  enfeebled  he  saw, 
or  thought  he  saw,  a  lion  or  other  wild  animal  and 
heard  it  growl;  the  growl  appeared  to  come  from  a 
distance,  while  the  animal  itself  appeared  to  be  near.1 

He  also  records  a  permanent  effect  on  his  spiritual  life 
and  on  his  character.  These  are  what  he  regards  as  the 
important  results  of  his  fast. 

1  The  Sadhu,  by  Streeter  and  Appasamy,  p.  25. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  RATIONAL  ELEMENT  IN 
RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

Even  if  we  are  right  in  supposing  that  primitive  re¬ 
ligious  belief  is  not  at  first  a  product  of  reasoning 
processes  but  of  vague  feelings  and  illogical  deductions, 
reflection  in  words  appears  early,  even  though  its  func¬ 
tion  at  first  may  be  only  to  justify  beliefs  already  held 
on  other  grounds.  We  seem  to  have  the  earliest  begin¬ 
nings  of  reflective  thought  of  this  kind  in  the  following 
account  quoted  by  Ribot.  An  intelligent  Basuto  is  the 
speaker: 

Twelve  years  ago,  I  went  to  feed  my  flocks.  The 
'weather  was  hazy.  I  sat  down  upon  a  rock  and  asked 
myself  sorrowful  questions;  yes,  sorrowful,  because  I 
was  unable  to  answer  them.  Who  has  touched  the 
stars  with  his  hands?  On  what  pillars  do  they  rest?  I 
asked  myself.  The  waters  are  never  weary ;  they  know 
no  other  law  than  to  flow  without  ceasing — from  morn¬ 
ing  till  night,  and  from  night  till  morning;  but  where 
do  they  stop?  and  who  makes  them  flow  thus?  The 
clouds  also  come  and  go,  and  burst  in  water  over  the 
earth.  Whence  come  they?  Who  sends  them?  The 
diviners  certainly  do  not  give  us  rain;  for  how  could 
they  do  it?  and  why  do  I  not  see  them  with  my  own 
eyes,  when  they  go  up  to  heaven  to  fetch  it?  ...  I 
cannot  see  the  wind;  but  what  is  it?  Who  brings  it, 
makes  it  blow?  .  .  .  Then  I  buried  my  face  in  both  my 
hands.1 

1  The  Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  by  Ribot  (English  transla¬ 
tion),  p.  371  n.,  quoted  from  The  Basutos  by  Casilos,  p.  239. 

78 


THE  RATIONAL  ELEMENT 


79 


In  the  discussion  of  the  rational  element  in  religious 
belief,  I  propose  to  start  with  a  descriptive  account  of 
the  reasoning  processes  which  lead  up  to  or  confirm  a 
belief  in  God  (in  other  words,  the  arguments  for  the 
existence  of  God)  without  any  attempt  at  a  philo¬ 
sophical  discussion  of  their  validity.  Such  a  discussion 
would  be  outside  the  scope  of  the  psychology  of  religion. 
Even  if  it  could  be  shown  that  any  or  all  of  these  argu¬ 
ments  were  invalid,  they  would  still  remain  of  psycho¬ 
logical  interest,  for  they  have  provided  the  foundation 
of  the  religious  belief  of  men. 

There  is  first  the  purely  a  'priori  ‘ontological’  argu¬ 
ment  of  St  Anselm,  Descartes,  and  Leibnitz.  This  has 
been  stated  in  several  different  wTays.  Descartes’  state¬ 
ment  of  it  may  be  put  quite  shortly  as  follows.  The  idea 
of  God  is  the  idea  of  a  perfect  being.  Existence  is  a 
perfection,  non-existence  an  imperfection.  Therefore,  a 
perfect  being  has  existence  as  one  of  his  attributes.  In 
other  words,  God  exists. 

The  others  are  arguments  from  experience.  What  is 
called  the  ‘cosmological’  argument  infers  God  from  the 
necessity  to  account  for  the  beginning  of  the  chain  of 
causal  sequence.  Every  event  in  the  world  has  its  cause 
in  some  previous  event  which  was  itself  similarly 
caused.  Once  such  a  series  of  events  has  started,  it  may 
go  on  for  ever,  but  there  is  no  reason  in  itself  why  it 
should  ever  have  started.  A  first  cause  must  be  assumed 
which  is  God. 

The  teleological  argument  differs  from  the  cosmo¬ 
logical  in  the  fact  that  it  makes  its  inference  from  the 
particular  characters  of  things  which  seem  to  point  to 
a  personal  creator.  Of  these  characters  three  are  de¬ 
scribed.  Living  things  show  in  their  structures  evidences 
of  order  beyond  what  can  be  conferred  by  the  operation 


80 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


of  physical  laws.  Things  seem  to  have  a  purpose  to 
fulfil  beyond  that  of  their  own  existence,  in  their  effects 
on  other  things.  Thirdly,  it  is  sometimes  urged  that  a 
single  order,  a  unity,  is  observed  in  the  whole  of  things. 
In  each  of  these  cases,  it  is  argued  that  such  marks  of 
design  point  to  a  designer. 

Finally  there  is  the  moral  argument  which  deduces 
the  existence  of  God  from  the  reality  of  the  moral  law. 
A  variety  of  this  is  the  aesthetic  argument  from  the 
reality  of  the  experience  of  beauty. 

This  does  not  quite  exhaust  the  rational  element  since 
a  good  deal  of  thinking  at  the  present  time  is  in  the 
direction  of  trying  to  found  an  argument  on  religious 
experience.  The  form  that  this  occasionally  takes  is  that 
the  religious  man  has  no  more  reason  for  denying  the 
reality  of  the  objects  of  his  religious  experience  than  he 
has  of  the  objects  of  his  experience  of  the  external 
world,  so  that  the  existence  of  God  is  as  certain  for  him 
as  that  of  the  external  world.  I  intend  to  discuss  these 
questions  more  fully  in  my  last  chapter  since  this  is  a 
part  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  almost  unavoidably 
raised  by  a  study  of  its  psychology.  It  should,  I  think, 
be  clear  that  the  particular  form  of  the  argument  from 
experience  which  I  have  just  stated  is  a  solution  of  the 
problem  too  easy  to  be  of  any  value. 

I  have  stated  these  arguments,  not  with  any  intention 
of  discussing  their  truth,  but  only  so  that  we  may  have 
an  idea  of  what  we  are  talking  about  when  discussing 
the  rational  root  of  religion.  The  problem  I  wish  to 
discuss  is  the  purely  psychological  one  of  how  far,  in 
fact,  belief  is  determined  by  processes  of  reasoning. 
Our  estimate  of  the  importance  of  the  rational  root 
of  religious  belief,  and  of  the  value  of  religion  of  the 
rational  type  must  very  largely  depend  on  our  answers 


THE  RATIONAL  ELEMENT 


81 


to  these  questions.  The  whole  tendency  of  modern 
psychology  is  to  tell  us  that  our  beliefs  are  determined 
for  us  far  more  by  our  feelings,  our  wishes,  and  so  forth, 
and  much  less  by  our  intellects  than  we  are  generally 
willing  to  admit.  In  other  words  they  are  very  largely 
affectively  determined.  It  is  true  that  we  may  be  able 
to  give  what  we  consider  to  be  excellent  intellectual 
reasons  for  our  beliefs.  These,  however,  may  not  be  the 
real  causes  of  our  holding  the  beliefs.  They  may  merely 
be  reasons  the  mind  subconsciously  supplies  to  justify 
it  in  holding  beliefs  which  are  really  held  on  different 
and  quite  irrational  grounds.  Such  chains  of  reasoning 
are  now  generally  called  rationalisations. 

A  rationalisation,  then,  may  be  defined  as  a  chain  of 
argument  used  by  the  mind  to  justify  itself  in  the  hold¬ 
ing  of  a  belief  which  really  owes  its  origin  to  something 
else — to  suggestion  or  to  some  affective  root. 

The  most  obvious  examples  of  rationalisation  are  to 
be  found  in  insanity.  A  man  suffering  from  the  delusion 
of  persecution  can  find  in  every  event  fresh  evidence  of 
the  designs  of  other  people  to  kill  him.  Such  a  belief 
cannot  be  shaken  by  argument,  since  his  belief  in  the 
intention  of  other  people  to  kill  him  provides  an  inter¬ 
pretation  of  facts  apparently  as  internally  consistent  as 
that  of  the  sane  person.  Yet  it  is  quite  apparent  to 
everyone  else  that  his  belief  is  untrue.  It  is  not  really  an 
inference  from  the  events  he  brings  forwmrd  in  its  sup¬ 
port,  but  is  a  construction  imposed  on  events  by  his 
mind. 

Dr  Hart  thus  describes  the  rationalisations  of  a  luna¬ 
tic  who  believes  that  his  wfife  is  trying  to  murder  him : 

If  his  wife  is  solicitous  for  his  welfare  her  behaviour 
is  regarded  as  a  cloak  to  conceal  her  real  design,  if  she 


82 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


treats  him  badly,  the  evil  intentions  are  clear,  if  she 
gives  him  food  it  is  obvious  that  she  proposes  to  poison 
him,  if  she  does  not  it  is  equally  obvious  that  she  hopes 
to  undermine  his  health  by  withholding  the  necessaries 
of  life.  If  we  argue  with  him  and  point  out  that  his 
belief  is  inconsistent  with  the  facts,  he  smiles  con¬ 
temptuously  at  our  credulity,  or  is  perhaps  suspicious 
that  we  are  the  paid  accomplices  of  his  wufe.1 

This  process  of  rationalisation  is  not,  however,  con¬ 
fined  to  insane  persons.  Most  of  us  will  have  no  diffi¬ 
culty  in  recognising  its  action  in  the  minds  of  other 
people,  however  unwilling  we  may  be  to  admit  its  exist¬ 
ence  in  our  own.  Often  when  conduct  or  opinions  are 
clearly  dictated  by  feeling,  a  series  of  reasons  is  given 
for  them  which  is  recognised  to  be  of  the  nature  of  a 
rationalisation  by  everyone  except  the  person  himself. 
I  will  give  an  example  of  this  from  the  same  book: 

One  of  my  patients,  a  former  Sunday  School  teacher, 
had  become  a  convinced  atheist.  He  insisted  that  he 
had  reached  this  standpoint  after  a  long  and  careful 
study  of  the  literature  of  the  subject,  and,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  really  had  acquired  a  remarkably  wide 
knowledge  of  religious  apologetics.  He  discoursed  at 
length  upon  the  evidence  of  Genesis,  marshalling  his 
arguments  with  considerable  skill,  and  producing  a 
coherent  and  well-reasoned  case.  Subsequent  psycho¬ 
logical  analysis,  however,  revealed  the  real  complex 
responsible  for  his  atheism;  the  girl  to  whom  he  had 
been  engaged  had  eloped  with  the  most  enthusiastic 
of  his  fellow  Sunday  School  teachers.  .  .  .  Resentment 
against  his  successful  rival,  had  expressed  itself  by  a 
repudiation  of  the  beliefs  which  had  formerly  consti¬ 
tuted  the  principal  bond  between  them.  The  argu- 

1  The  Psychology  of  Insanity ,  by  Dr  Bernard  Hart  (Cambridge, 
1918),  p.  86. 


THE  RATIONAL  ELEMENT  83 

ments,  the  study  and  the  quotations  were  merely  an 
elaborate  rationalisation.1 

It  is  less  easy  to  convince  ourselves  of  the  existence  of 
rationalisation  in  our  own  minds.  This  is  to  be  expected 
from  the  fact  that  we  judge  ourselves  mainly  from  in¬ 
trospection  while  we  judge  the  motives  of  other  people 
mainly  by  inferences  from  their  behaviour.  The  un¬ 
reality  of  the  apparent  connection  between  beliefs  and 
the  rationalisations  which  are  supposed  to  support  them 
is  not,  of  course,  apparent  to  introspection,  because  the 
object  of  the  rationalisation  is  to  satisfy  our  owm 
minds  that  our  beliefs  are  really  held  on  rational 
grounds.  But  there  are  ways  by  wdiich  an  honest  exami¬ 
nation  into  our  own  minds  will,  I  think,  convince  us  that 
we  are  ourselves  guilty  of  the  habit  of  making  rational¬ 
isations.  Looking  back  on  our  past  conduct  and  beliefs 
and  the  reasons  we  gave  for  them,  it  is  possible  to  see 
how  often  those  reasons  were  mere  rationalisations. 
They  seemed  real  enough  to  us  at  the  time,  but  now 
they  have  lost  their  power  of  convincing  us  and  we  see 
how  far  our  real  motives  were  removed  from  them.  Per¬ 
haps  the  most  convincing  case  is  after  we  have  passed 
through  a  total  change  of  opinion,  such  as  takes  place  in 
a  conversion  whether  in  religion  or  in  some  other  matter 
as  the  holding  of  a  scientific  theory.  The  usual  experi¬ 
ence  of  such  a  change  is  that  evidence  accumulated 
against  our  earlier  conviction.  But  instead  of  gradually 
undermining  our  confidence  in  it,  what  happened  was 
that  every  new  piece  of  evidence  was  fitted  into  our  old 
theory  by  some  newT  piece  of  reasoning.  Then  quite 
suddenly  the  whole  structure  collapsed,  and  we  saw 
that  all  the  reasonings  by  which  we  tried  to  make  our 

1  The  Psychology  of  Insanity,  p.  71. 


84 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


new  facts  fit  into  our  old  theory  were  merely  hollow 
devices  for  retaining  our  belief  unshaken  and  that  they 
had  no  compelling  force  at  all.  Our  new  theory  is  soon 
supported  by  a  fresh  system  of  reasons  of  its  own. 

The  discovery  of  the  existence  of  such  a  process  as 
rationalisation  leads  us  to  suspect  that  processes  of 
reasoning  play  a  much  less  important  part  in  the  forma¬ 
tion  of  our  beliefs  than  we  like  to  assign  to  them.  In 
our  own  subject,  we  may  suspect  that  what  we  have 
called  the  rational  element  has  played  a  less  predomi¬ 
nant  part  in  the  formation  of  religious  belief  than  the 
intellectual  vanity  of  man  leads  him  to  suppose.  The 
further  step  of  saying  that  it  plays  no  part  at  all,  and 
that  all  our  processes  of  reasoning  are  mere  rationalisa¬ 
tions  used  to  justify  beliefs  really  held  on  other  grounds, 
is  an  obvious  one.  I  think,  however,  that  we  shall  be 
wise  to  examine  it  rather  carefully  before  we  take  it. 

This  position  is  assumed  in  psychological  controversy 
more  often  than  it  is  stated.  Le  Bon  is  the  only  person 
in  whose  works  I  remember  having  seen  it  stated  quite 
definitely.  Once  one  has  grasped  the  meaning  of  ration¬ 
alisation,  its  use  in  controversy  is  fascinatingly  easy. 
You  need  not  examine  yoqr  opponent’s  arguments  at  all. 
You  need  only  state  what  you  imagine  to  be  the  affec¬ 
tive  grounds  of  his  opinions,  and  dismiss  all  his  reasons 
as  rationalisations.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  method 
is  becoming  popular.  In  the  whole  of  thought,  I  know 
of  no  other  way  of  refuting  an  opponent  which  is  effec¬ 
tive,  certain,  and  does  not  require  you  to  do  any  thinking 
at  all.  If  you  wish  to  refute  religion,  you  need  only 
sketch  what  I  have  already  described  as  the  affective 
root  of  religious  belief,  detailing  the  needs,  etc.,  which  it 
satisfies.  You  then  say  that  these  are  the  real  reasons 
why  people  believe  in  religion  and  that  all  else  is  mere 


THE  RATIONAL  ELEMENT 


85 


rationalisation.  If  you  wish  to  refute  atheism,  your  task 
is  perhaps  even  easier.  You  can  find  the  affective  root 
of  your  opponent’s  unbelief  in  the  fact  that  he  is  not 
living  in  conformity  with  the  rigidity  of  morals  which 
is  demanded  by  religion.  All  his  reasons,  you  say,  are 
nothing  but  rationalisations  to  cover  this  moral  laxity, 
and  once  more  you  are  satisfied  that  your  case  is  com¬ 
plete.  I  am  not  suggesting  mere  unrealised  possibilities 
now;  arguments  of  this  sort  are  being  increasingly 
used.  The  wonderful  ease  of  the  method  should  make 
us  pause  before  accepting  the  implicit  assumptions  on 
which  it  is  based. 

In  fact,  these  writers  generally  assume  that  a  suffi¬ 
cient  account  of  their  opponent’s  reasoning  is  given  by 
stating  their  affective  grounds,  but  they  seem  somehow 
to  exempt  their  own.  This,  of  course,  is  illogical.  Affec¬ 
tive  grounds  can  always  be  found  for  any  opinion,  and 
if  that  were  the  end  of  the  matter,  we  would  have  to 
give  up  writing  books  or  delivering  lectures  which  were 
anything  more  than  a  mere  recitation  of  facts.  The  fact 
that  the  statement  of  the  supposed  affective  grounds  of 
his  belief  was  an  easy  way  of  triumphing  over  an  oppo¬ 
nent  is,  of  course,  no  new  discovery  of  modern  psy¬ 
chology.  Those  of  you  who  are  close  observers  of 
human  life  wall  have  recognised  that  it  has  always  been 
the  principal  dialectical  method  of  the  arguments  which 
take  place  in  the  gutter.  It  has  not  been  unknown  in 
more  intellectual  circles. 

There  are  two  principal  directions  in  which  this  kind 
of  criticism  may  be  found  unsatisfactory.  The  first  is 
the  fact  that  there  is  really  no  reason  at  all  for  suppos¬ 
ing  that  all  reasoning  processes  are  in  fact  without 
influence,  and  a  legitimate  influence,  on  the  formation 
of  belief.  Secondly,  there  is  a  possibility  which  must 


86  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

be  considered  with  some  caution  that  the  determination 
of  belief  by  processes  not  strictly  rational  may  not  be 
altogether  a  mark  of  falsity,  as  our  intellectual  habits 
of  mind  tend  to  lead  us  to  suppose. 

Let  us  examine  with  some  care  the  process  of  mind 
which  is  involved  in  a  change  of  opinion,  such  as  the 
change  of  opinion  about  some  scientific  theory.  We  have 
already  looked  at  this  shortly  and  we  saw  that  rational¬ 
isation  played  a  part  in  it.  Reasons  can  be  produced  for 
the  original  opinion.  Some  of  these  may  be  rationalisa¬ 
tions,  but  there  is  certainly  no  reason  for  supposing  that 
they  all  are.  The  mind  has  probably  at  first,  in  coming 
to  its  opinion,  no  affective  bias  one  way  or  the  other. 
Then,  after  the  opinion  has  been  formed,  experience 
begins  to  accumulate  against  the  theory.  There  is  now 
a  strong  affective  bias  in  favour  of  retaining  it.  In  the 
first  place,  there  is  unwillingness  to  admit  that  one  was 
wrong.  Secondly,  the  evidence  may  not  at  first  be 
strong  enough  to  overthrow  the  theory  completely,  so 
that  if  its  implications  were  accepted,  it  wrould  result  in 
placing  the  mind  in  the  unpleasant  situation  of  doubt. 
Therefore  the  mind  normally  resists  the  implications  of 
this  new  experience  and  creates  a  rationalisation  wdiich 
makes  it  fit  in  with  the  old  theory. 

Even  with  the  most  honest  arid  careful  scientific 
workers  the  usual  attitude  towards  a  fact  wThich  seems 
to  conflict  with  their  theories  is  irritation,  and  either  a 
refusal  to  accept  it  or  else  an  elaborate  rationalisation 
to  account  for  it  wdiich  seems  ridiculous  to  other  people. 
This  may  go  on  for  some  time  until  the  original  theory 
is  supported  by  a  mass  of  such  rationalisations.  But  we 
are  not  justified  in  concluding  that  the  new  facts  have 
had  no  effect  on  the  mind  of  the  investigator.  The 
rationalisations  are  only  a  temporary  device  to  avoid 


THE  RATIONAL  ELEMENT 


87 


the  existence  of  a  period  of  uncertainty.  If  the  new 
experience  really  undermines  his  theory,  a  time  will 
come  when  his  carefully  prepared  rationalisations  will 
collapse  like  a  house  of  cards,  and  he  will  suddenly 
change  his  mind.  He  will  then  be  able  to  see  the  un¬ 
reality  of  some  of  his  old  supports.  The  point  I  wish  you 
to  notice  about  this  case  is  that  the  investigator  does  not 
really  hold  his  opinions  independently  of  evidence 
against  them.  He  appears  to  do  so,  and  his  case  might 
by  a  superficial  observer  be  quoted  as  an  example  of 
pure  rationalisation  to  show  that  affective  grounds  de¬ 
termined  the  whole  of  his  belief.  His  beliefs  are  in  fact 
really  plastic  to  the  influence  of  experience.  This  is 
what  I  wish  to  suggest  as  the  essential  criterion  of  a 
rationally  held  belief.  His  reasons  are,  it  is  true,  mixed 
with  rationalisations,  but  so  far  as  they  express  a  real 
moulding  influence  of  experience,  they  are  genuine  ones 
Such  plasticity  of  beliefs  to  experience  is  the  mark  of  a 
rational  mind. 

We  can  contrast  this  with  another  case.  We  all  know 
the  man  who  goes  on  resisting  experience.  As  fact  after 
fact  accumulates  against  his  theories,  he  goes  on  elabo- 
xating  rationalisation  after  rationalisation.  He  may 
spend  his  whole  life  without  changing  his  mind.  While 
his  subject  is  advancing,  he  sits  in  his  study  writing 
books  which  are  more  and  more  involved,  in  which  he 
fits  all  the  new  discoveries  into  the  theories  of  his  youth. 
He  is  never  refuted.  His  reasons  appear  marvels  of 
ingenuity  and  consistency,  but  no  one  else  believes  his 
theories  and  they  soon  cease  to  read  his  books.  Their 
elaborate  rationalisations  are  unnecessary  to  people  who 
do  not  share  his  affective  disposition  in  favour  of  his 
theories.  He  is  an  example  of  a  man  whose  opinions  are 
not  plastic  to  the  influence  of  experience.  We  justly 


88  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

suspect  the  reasons  he  gives  us,  however  consistent  they 
may  appear. 

While  admitting,  then,  that  actually  intellectual  proc¬ 
esses  play  a  smaller  part  in  the  formation  of  belief  than 
we  are  generally  inclined  to  suppose,  they  do  play  some 
part.  This  part  is  principally  in  the  criticism  and  con¬ 
trol  of  beliefs  wdiich  may  owe  their  origin  in  part  to 
other  causes.  The  logical  consistency  of  beliefs  and  their 
perceived  coherency  with  the  rest  of  our  knowledge  de¬ 
termine  whether  they  shall  pass  the  test  of  our  intel¬ 
lects.  To  a  normally  constituted  mind,  a  belief  which 
does  not  satisfy  these  tests  will  not  permanently  be  held, 
however  much  it  may  be  given  an  appearance  of  logical 
consistency  by  being  bolstered  up  by  rationalisations. 
The  plasticity  of  .beliefs  to  the  influence  of  experience  is 
the  sign  by  which  their  rationality  may  be  judged.  Any 
reasoning  process  which  does  not  start  from  experience, 
such  as  the  ontological  argument  for  the  existence  of 
God,  is  quite  naturally  suspected  of  being  a  rationalisa¬ 
tion,  however  logically  rigid  it  may  appear.  And,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  is  interesting  to  notice  how  extraor¬ 
dinarily  small  its  influence  has  been  in  the  history  of 
religious  thought.  The  natural  reaction  to  it  is  to  sus¬ 
pect  that  there  is  a  catch  somewhere,  even  if  the  argu¬ 
ment  cannot  be  refuted.  The  Roman  Church  has  given 
expression  to  this  feeling  by  laying  down  that  ontolo- 
gism  cannot  safely  be  taught. 

In  addition,  there  are  the  tendencies  wdiich  have 
already  been  mentioned  to  doubt  whether  the  deter¬ 
mination  of  beliefs  by  reason  is  the  only  criterion  of 
their  truth.  The  hackneyed  piece  of  advice,  “Give  your 
decision  boldly  for  it  is  probably  right,  but  never  give 
your  reasons  for  they  will  almost  certainly  be  wrong/’ 
is  often  quoted  as  an  example  of  the  implicit  recognition 


THE  RATIONAL  ELEMENT 


89 


of  the  process  of  rationalisation.  But  it  is  often  forgot¬ 
ten  that  it  also  implies  that  one’s  beliefs  may  in  fact  be 
true  although  one’s  intellectual  defence  of  them  is  a 
mere  rationalisation.  In  other  words,  that  the  truth  has 
been  reached  by  some  other  process  than  reasoning. 
The  attitude  mentioned  in  the  last  chapter,  of  resting 
belief  on  feeling,  is  a  more  extreme  example  of  the 
denial  of  reason  as  the  final  decider  in  matters  of  belief. 
Such  an  epistemology  as  that  of  Bergson,  in  which  intui¬ 
tion  is  regarded  as  a  guide  to  truth  of  greater  value 
than  intelligence,  also  denies  the  supreme  importance 
claimed  for  the  rational  root  in  the  formation  of  belief 
and  therefore  in  the  discovery  of  truth. 

We  will  now  turn  to  a  study  of  religion  of  the  rational 
type.  This  is  the  type  of  religion  in  which  either  de¬ 
liberately  in  response  to  a  preconceived  theory,  or  as  a 
result  of  a  habit  of  mind,  the  rational  element  receives 
a  disproportionate  amount  of  emphasis.  It  is  found  in 
all  persons  of  an  intellectual  habit  of  mind  such  as 
philosophers.  It  is  the  natural  habit  of  mind  of  anyone 
at  first  who  is  trying  to  think  clearly  about  these  things. 
Those  who  think  clearly  enough  are  generally  driven  out 
of  it,  either  into  scepticism  or  into  a  religion  which  rests 
much  more  on  feeling,  by  their  discovery  of  the  weak¬ 
ness  of  the  position  of  the  rational  type  of  religion.  This 
weakness  is  a  double  one.  There  is  first  the  intellectual 
unsatisfactoriness  of  the  so-called  proofs  of  the  existence 
of  God.  Supposed  to  have  compelling  force  as  apodic- 
tically  certain  proofs,  their  conclusions  can  as  a  matter 
of  fact  be  doubted,  and  have  been  doubted  by  philoso¬ 
phers  who  are  as  capable  of  forming  an  opinion  on 
them  as  those  who  have  been  convinced.  Secondly, 
there  is  the  psychological  unsatisfactoriness  of  a  posi¬ 
tion  which  rests  on  a  part  only  of  what  forms  belief  in  a 


90 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


normal  man.  Purely  intellectual  conviction  of  the  ex¬ 
istence  of  God  means  very  little  until  it  has  become 
associated  with  feelings  and  with  experience.  The  mere 
proof  of  the  existence  of  a  supreme  being  would  lead  us 
little  further  towards  a  religion  than  the  proof  of  the 
existence  of  infinite  numbers.  A  man  wfith  a  religion 
purely  of  the  rational  type  would  be  in  a  worse  position 
than  the  devils  who,  St  James  tells  us,  “believe  and 
tremble.”  He  would  believe  and  remain  in  a  condition 
of  the  most  profound  indifference. 

An  excellent  example  of  the  passage  from  religion  of 
the  intellectual  type  to  one  in  which  the  affective 
element  played  a  more  important  part  is  provided  by 
the  autobiography  of  A1  Ghazzali.  He  was  a  Moham¬ 
medan  professor  of  theology  at  Baghdad.  He  began 
with  a  religion  which  was  of  the  traditional  and  rational 
type.  A  profound  study  of  Western  philosophy,  par¬ 
ticularly  of  Descartes,  convinced  him  of  the  instability 
of  the  rational  foundation  of  the  belief  in  God.  He 
became  completely  sceptical,  and  remained  in  that  state 
for  many  years.  Then  he  was  led  back  to  religion,  but 
not  by  the  path  of  reason.  He  was,  he  tells  us,  redeemed 
by  a  light  which  God  caused  to  penetrate  into  his  heart, 
and  he  became  a  Sufi  (a  Mohammedan  believer  of  the 
affective  type). 

Having  now  discussed  in  turn  the  five  roots  of  the 
belief  in  God,  the  task  of  the  psychology  of  religion  is 
not  over.  Most  of  the  remaining  chapters  until  we  come 
to  discuss  Conversion  and  Mysticism  will  be  devoted  to 
the  attempt  to  get  some  insight  into  what  underlies  the 
elements  which  have  already  been  discussed.  Our 
treatment  of  the  affective  element,  for  example,  was 
conspicuously  incomplete.  We  merely  described  emo¬ 
tional  experiences  wdiich  contributed  to  religious  belief 


THE  RATIONAL  ELEMENT 


91 


without  ever  asking  whether  psychology  could  give  any 
further  explanation  of  the  experiences  themselves.  This 
is  a  question  which  it  is  impossible  to  attempt  to  answer 
without  going  much  farther  into  the  psychology  of 
feeling  states,  of  instincts  and  of  the  subconscious  mind. 
These,  therefore,  will  form  the  subject  of  the  following 
chapters. 


CHAPTER  VII 


CONSCIOUS  PROCESSES 

My  intention  in  the  present  chapter  is  to  spend  a  short 
time  in  the  discussion  of  the  psychology  of  conscious 
states,  and  particularly  of  the  psychology  of  feeling.  In 
any  discussion  of  the  psychology  of  religion,  we  are  con¬ 
stantly  talking  about  emotions,  feelings,  sentiments, 
etc.,  and  it  is  as  well  to  make  our  thought  as  clear  as 
possible  about  these  things.  Perhaps  more  than  in  any 
other  part  of  psychology,  wre  are  faced  by  the  difficulty 
that  these  words  are  used  in  ordinary  speech  with 
vaguely  defined  meanings.  It  is  only  possible  to  attain 
the  clarity  of  thought  essential  to  a  scientific  discussion 
by  taking  the  terms  of  common  speech  and  giving  them 
a  strictly  definite  meaning.  So  far  as  possible  it  is  as 
well  to  keep  this  meaning  somewhere  within  the  limits 
of  the  meanings  our  words  bear  in  popular  speech,  but 
this  is  not  essential.  It  is  clearly  impossible  to  use  words 
in  the  same  meaning  as  they  have  in  their  ordinary  use, 
partly  because  this  ordinary  use  is  so  variable,  partly 
because  as  we  begin  to  refine  our  thought  we  find  that 
it  is  necessary  to  find  names  for  things  which  have  no 
names  at  all  in  ordinary  language  because  they  are  not 
things  which  the  ordinary  man  has  thought  of  sepa¬ 
rately. 

It  may  be  as  well  to  point  out  here,  that  one  of  the 
difficulties  we  shall  meet  with  in  dealing  with  the 
historical  material  for  the  psychology  of  religion  (par¬ 
ticularly  of  mysticism)  is  that  we  find  that,  although 

92 


CONSCIOUS  PROCESSES 


93 


mental  states  are  often  described  with  real  introspective 
insight,  these  descriptions  are  usually  given  in  terms  of 
a  psychology  which  has  been  completely  abandoned. 
This  is  the  scholastic  faculty  psychology.  Quite  briefly, 
the  difference  between  the  scholastics’  psychology  and 
our  own  is  that  they  thought  of  a  soul  possessing  the 
faculties  of  will,  memory,  imagination,  etc.,  just  as  the 
body  possesses  arms,  legs  and  a  head.  This  conception 
of  faculties  violates  a  fundamental  principle  of  scientific 
method — that  entities  should  not  be  multiplied  un¬ 
necessarily.  The  immediately  experienced  facts  are 
conations,  not  a  faculty  of  will,  memories,  not  a  faculty 
of  memory,  images,  not  a  faculty  of  imagination.  Since 
we  can  give  a  complete  description  of  mind  by  talking 
about  these  immediately  experienced  facts  only,  we 
have  no  right  to  talk  about  faculties  at  all,  and  in 
modern  psychology  we  do  not.  It  is  necessary  there¬ 
fore,  when  using  data  from  such  writers  as  the  Catholic 
mystics,  to  translate  what  they  say  from  the  language 
of  the  scholastic  psychology  into  the  language  of 
modern  psychology. 

It  is  usual  to  analyse  a  complete  condition  of  mind 
at  any  moment  into  three  elements:  cognition,  feeling 
and  conation.  Cognition  is  used  to  cover  all  ways  of 
having  knowledge  of  awareness  of  an  object.  By  object 
is  here  meant  anything  that  can  become  an  object  of 
thought,  an  abstract  idea  as  well  as  a  material  object. 

Feeling  is  used  in  widely  different  senses  in  ordinary 
speech.  We  speak  of  having  a  feeling  of  hunger.  We  are 
then  using  feeling  for  an  organic  sensation.  There  are 
four  other  senses  in  which  it  is  used.  The  sense  in  which 
it  is  to  be  restricted  as  an  element  in  all  states  of  con¬ 
sciousness  is  much  the  same  as  our  use  of  it  when  we 
speak  of  a  feeling  of  anger  or  a  feeling  of  displeasure.  If 


94 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


we  want  a  name  for  a  unit  of  feeling,  we  can  call  it  an 
affect.  The  whole  of  the  feeling  element  in  our  mind  at 
any  one  time  we  call  an  affective  state. 

Conation  is  the  active  element  in  our  conscious  life. 
It  includes  the  mental  side  of  voluntary  movements, 
and  the  production  of  voluntary  changes  in  the  chain 
of  ideas.  The  whole  system  of  our  conations  is  what 
was  called  in  the  old  faculty  psychology  and  in  ordinary 
speech  the  will. 

These  three  elements  are  not  distinct  states  of  con¬ 
sciousness  which  may  exist  in  the  mind  in  isolation. 
They  are  constituents  of  states  of  mind  in  which  all 
three  exist  together.  Every  complex  state  of  mind  con¬ 
sists  of  cognition,  feeling  and  conation  in  conjunction. 

Our  affects  may  be  divided  into  two  classes,  those  we 
find  pleasant  and  those  we  find  painful.  Pleasantness 
and  painfulness  are  thus  qualities  of  feelings.  Strong 
fear  has  a  painful  affect,  joy  has  a  pleasant  one.  This 
quality  of  affects  is  called  feeling  tone  or  hedonic  tone. 
Pain  is  a  word  used  in  so  many  different  senses  that  it 
is  not  generally  employed  as  a  name  for  the  feeling  tone 
opposite  in  character  to  pleasure.  It  is  more  usual  to 
coin  a  word  and  to  call  it  unpleasure.  The  feeling  tone 
of  an  affect  is  thus  its  quality  of  pleasure  or  unpleasure. 

I  wish  next  to  discuss  the  meaning  of  the  word 
emotion.  Emotion  is  used  in  two  distinct  senses  by 
psychologists.  It  does  not  matter  which  we  adopt  since 
it  is  really  only  a  question  of  convenience,  but  it  is  as 
well  to  notice  the  difference,  because  in  reading  about 
emotion  in  psychological  text-books,  there  is  always 
danger  of  mistaking  a  difference  in  the  use  of  words  for 
a  real  difference  of  opinion  about  facts. 

The  best  way  of  beginning  our  treatment  of  emotion, 
is  to  start,  not  by  a  discussion  of  the  meaning  of  the 


CONSCIOUS  PROCESSES 


95 


word  but  of  a  concrete  fact — by  trying  to  find  out  what 
we  mean  when  we  make  such  a  statement  as  that  some¬ 
one  is  angry.  This  will  be  most  clear  if  we  do  it  in 
the  form  of  a  diagram.  We  may  notice  first  of  all  that 
we  mean  both  something  about  his  state  of  mind,  and 
something  about  his  bodily  behaviour.  We  will  begin 
by  drawing  a  line  down  the  middle  of  the  page,  and 
putting  the  particulars  of  the  contents  of  his  mind  on 
the  left-hand  side  of  the  line,  and  the  details  of  his 
bodily  behaviour  on  the  right. 


Mind 

Cognition.  Of  the  cause  and 
the  object  of  anger. 

Feeling.  A  distinctive  affect, 
on  the  whole  of  unpleasant 
feeling  tone. 

Conation.  Of  striking,  etc. 


Body 


Involuntary  bodily  changes. 
Flushing,  increased  rapidity  of 
heart  beat,  difficulty  of  inspira¬ 
tion,  etc. 

Behaviour.  Striking  or  clench¬ 
ing  the  fist. 


Diagram  to  illustrate  the  analysis  oj  the  emotion  of  anger. 


The  mind  of  a  man  when  he  is  angry,  as  at  all  other 
times,  contains  all  three  elements,  cognition,  feeling  and 
conation,  although  it  is  the  feeling  element  which  par¬ 
ticularly  attracts  our  attention  in  the  state  of  anger. 
The  cognition  may  be  not  very  prominent.  It  includes 
an  awareness  of,  let  us  say,  the  affront  received  and  of 
the  person  with  whom  the  subject  is  angry.  The  feeling 
element  is  a  strong  and  distinctive  affect  (with  a  feeling 
tone  on  the  whole  unpleasant)  which  is  peculiar  to  the 
state  under  consideration.  The  conation  is  the  mental 
side  of  the  impulse  to  strike  or  to  clench  the  fist.  On  the 
bodily  side,  there  are  two  kinds  of  event.  There  are  first, 
a  series  of  involuntary  changes — flushing,  increased 
rapidity  of  heart  beat,  difficulty  of  inspiration,  etc.  In 


96 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


addition  to  these,  there  are  voluntary  movements — 
striking  or  clenching  the  fist.  In  the  diagram,  I  have 
put  these  voluntary  movements  opposite  to  the  cona¬ 
tions  which  are  the  mental  aspect  of  them.  The  in¬ 
voluntary  movements  I  have  put  opposite  to  the  feeling 
element  in  the  mind,  because  in  the  James-Lange  theory 
of  the  emotions  the  affect  is  supposed  to  be  merely  the 
organic  sensations  due  to  these  bodily  changes. 

Now  we  have  the  alternative  of  including  in  the  word 
‘emotion,’  everything  that  is  on  the  mind  side  of  the 
central  line,  or  of  restricting  it  to  the  affect.  We  can 
call  it  the  total  mental  state  of  the  man  when  he  is 
angry,  or  only  the  feeling  element  of  that  total  state. 
Professor  Ward  and  Mr  Shand  choose  the  first  alter¬ 
native.  Dr  Myers  and  Dr  Prideaux  choose  the  second. 
There  is,  of  course,  no  question  of  which  is  right;  it  is 
merely  a  question  of  convenience.  It  is  only  necessary 
to  decide  which  meaning  we  shall  adopt  and  to  use  it 
consistently.  I  intend  to  adopt  the  first  alternative,  and 
to  mean  by  emotion  the  whole  state  of  mind,  using  the 
word  affect  when  I  wush  to  refer  only  to  the  feeling- 
element.  Mr  Shand  also  speaks  of  the  system  of  the 
emotion,  by  which  he  means  the  whole  state  of  mind 
plus  its  bodily  accompaniments,  plus  the  bodily  and 
psychical  disposition  called  an  instinct. 

Some  emotions,  such  as  awe  and  contempt,  can  be 
analysed  into  simpler  emotions ;  others,  such  as  fear  and 
anger,  cannot.  The  former  are  called  complex  emotions, 
the  latter  primary  emotions.  McDougall,  for  example, 
analyses  awe  as  a  combination  of  the  primary  emotions 
of  wonder,  fear  and  negative  self-feeling  (the  emotion  of 
submission) ;  contempt  as  a  combination  of  disgust  and 
positive  self-feeling  (elation  or  the  emotion  of  self- 
assertion). 


CONSCIOUS  PROCESSES 


97 


There  is  no  exact  agreement  amongst  psychologists 
as  to  what  are  the  primary  emotions.  Shand  gives  fear, 
anger,  joy,  sorrow,  disgust,  repugnance  and  surprise. 
McDougall  mentions  fear,  anger,  wonder,  disgust,  nega¬ 
tive  and  positive  self-feeling  and  tender  emotion  (to  be 
explained  later).  My  own  inclination  is  to  follow  Shand 
in  retaining  joy  and  sorrow  as  primary  emotions;  while 
following  McDougall  in  omitting  repugnance,  and  add¬ 
ing  positive  and  negative  self-feeling  and  tender 
emotion. 

We  sometimes  experience  the  affect  proper  to  an 
emotion,  without  the  accompanying  cognition  of  an 
object,  so  without  the  possibility  of  giving  vent  to  the 
distinctive  behaviour.  An  example  is  when  wTe  do  what 
is  popularly  called  getting  out  of  bed  on  the  wrong  side. 
We  have  the  affect  proper  to  anger,  but  there  is  no 
object  of  our  anger.  This  is  called  a  mood.  It  is  a  par¬ 
ticularly  unpleasant  frame  of  mind  because  we  cannot 
get  the  relief  we  obtain  in  an  emotion  of  anger  by  giving 
vent  to  the  behaviour  proper  to  the  emotion.  For  this 
reason,  we  change  an  angry  mood  into  an  emotion  of 
anger  as  quickly  as  possible  by  finding  a  suitable  object 
for  our  anger.  A  mood  may  be  defined  as  a  state  of 
mind  containing  the  affect  proper  to  an  emotion  but 
without  the  associated  cognitions. 

We  will  now  leave  the  consideration  of  the  emotions 
and  pass  on  to  mental  facts  of  a  more  complex  type,  of 
which  we  may  take  hatred  as  an  example.  It  is  clear 
that  hatred  is  not  an  emotion.  It  is  something  of  a 
different  kind  from,  let  us  say,  anger.  When  we  say  that 
we  hate  a  person,  we  do  not  mean  that  we  are,  at  the 
present  moment,  having  any  specific  experience  con¬ 
nected  with  him,  but  that  wTe  have  a  mental  disposition 
to  experience  certain  emotions  wdien  the  object  of  our 


98 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


hate  is  in  certain  situations.  We  tend  to  feel  sorrow 
when  he  is  happy,  joy  when  he  is  unhappy,  repugnance 
in  his  presence,  and  so  on.  The  object  of  our  hate  may 
not  be  in  our  minds,  and  then  we  experience  no  emotion 
about  him  at  all.  But  in  ordinary  language  we  say  that 
we  still  hate,  for  the  disposition  towards  the  emotions 
is  still  there  ready  to  be  called  out  as  soon  as  the  hated 
object  comes  again  into  our  thoughts. 

The  great  service  which  Mr  Shand  has  performed  for 
psychology  is  to  distinguish  things  of  this  class  and  to 
provide  them  with  a  name.  The  name  he  gives  them  is 
sentiment.  This  is  not  quite  the  meaning  of  the  word 
sentiment  in  common  speech,  but  there  seems  to  be  no 
word  which  is  more  suitable.  A  sentiment  we  may 
define  as  a  system  of  emotional  dispositions.  The 
difference  between  it  and  an  emotion  is  that  an  emotion 
is  an  actual  experience,  a  sentiment  is  only  a  disposition 
towards  experiences  of  a  certain  kind.  The  different 
emotions  which  the  sentiment  of  hate  may  call  up  under 
appropriate  conditions  are  called  by  Shand,  the  emo¬ 
tions  organised  in  the  system  of  hate. 

M.  Ribot’s  word  passion  in  his  Essai  sur  les  Passions 
is  used  in  a  manner  similar  to  Shand’s  sentiment,  but  he 
defines  it  quite  differently  as  an  intense  and  prolonged 
emotion.  It  is  a  less  useful  conception,  and  was  never 
very  widely  adopted  by  English  psychologists,  who  have 
however  been  almost  unanimous  in  their  welcome  of 
Shand’s  conception  of  the  sentiment. 

As  an  example  of  a  sentiment,  I  might  have  taken 
love  instead  of  hate.  The  reason  why  I  did  not  do  so  is 
because,  although  the  word  love  in  ordinary  speech  is 
generally  used  to  describe  a  sentiment,  it  is  also  used 
for  an  emotion — the  pleasurable  emotion  felt  in  the 
presence  of  the  object  of  our  love.  This  ambiguity 


CONSCIOUS  PROCESSES 


99 


causes  some  confusion  of  thought  and  may  best  be  re¬ 
moved  from  psychology  by  restricting  the  word  love  to 
the  sentiment  of  love,  and  finding  a  new  word  for  the 
emotion.  The  name  now  generally  employed  for  the 
emotion  felt  in  the  presence  of  the  object  of  love  is 
tender  emotion. 

The  fact  that  love  as  ordinarily  understood  is  a  senti¬ 
ment,  and  may  therefore  organise  in  its  system  a  variety 
of  different  emotions  is  one  which  seems  to  have  been  a 
recurring  surprise  to  lovers.  It  is  a  discovery  wThich  has 
frequently  been  expressed  by  them  in  verse,  although 
not  always  with  the  precision  required  by  scientific 
psychology.  Shand  quotes  Chaucer  and  Coleridge  as 
examples  of  this  and  also  the  following  lines  from  Swift: 

Love  why  do  we  one  passion  call 
When  fiis  a  compound  of  them  all? 

Where  hot  and  cold,  where  sharp  and  sweet, 

In  all  their  equipages  meet; 

Where  pleasures  mix’d  with  Pains  appear, 

Sorrow  with  Joy,  and  Hope  with  Fear. 

In  other  words,  the  poet  insists  that  it  is  incorrect  to 
speak  of  love  as  a  single  emotion  since  it  is  a  sentiment 
which  organises  in  its  system  all  the  emotions.  The 
latter  statement,  as  will  be  seen  later,  is  not  strictly 
accurate. 

Love  is  a  sentiment  which  organises  in  its  system 
most  of  the  emotions  of  hate,  but  they  are  called  up  by 
opposite  situations  of  its  object.  In  love  we  feel  sorrow 
at  the  unhappiness  and  at  the  absence  of  the  object  of 
love,  joy  at  his  happiness,  fear  at  anything  threatening 
the  object  of  love,  anger  at  any  person  injuring  him. 
But  the  emotion  of  repugnance  called  out  by  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  an  object  of  hate  is  not  found  in  the  system  of 


100 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


love  at  all,  and  the  tender  emotion  felt  in  the  presence  of 
the  object  of  love  is  not  found  in  the  system  of  hate. 
Tender  emotion  is,  in  fact,  peculiar  to  the  various  forms 
of  the  sentiment  of  love. 

You  will  remember  that,  in  the  first  chapter  we  met 
with  a  definition  of  religion  as  a  particular  kind  of  emo¬ 
tion.  It  should  be  clear  that,  in  the  sense  in  which  we 
are  using  the  word  emotion ,  the  definition  is  absurd. 
On  its  mental  side,  religion  is  clearly  a  sentiment,  it  is  a 
system  of  emotional  dispositions  organising  in  its  sys¬ 
tem  a  variety  of  different  emotions.  It  is  therefore  cor¬ 
rect  to  speak  of  the  religious  sentiment.  James,  it  is 
true,  denies  that  there  is  any  specific  religious  senti¬ 
ment,  but  he  is  using  sentiment  loosely  in  much  the 
same  sense  as  we  use  emotion.  He  is  not  speaking  of 
sentiment  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  employed  by  Shand. 
LTsing  sentiment  in  that  sense,  we  may  speak  of  the  reli¬ 
gious  sentiment  when  we  mean  the  system  of  emotional 
dispositions  organised  around  the  objects  of  religion. 

The  emotions  organised  in  the  religious  sentiment 
are,  on  the  whole,  the  same  as  those  of  the  sentiment  of 
love.  We  may  ask  whether  there  is  any  specific  reli¬ 
gious  emotion  found  organised  only  in  the  religious 
sentiment.  Probably  there  is  not  one  which  is  never 
found  in  any  other  sentiment,  but  the  characteristic 
emotion  of  religion  is  the  highly  complex  one  called 
reverence.  McDougall  considers  that  there  are  few 
human  beings  able  to  excite  reverence,  and  that  those 
who  do  are  generally  regarded  as  the  ministers  and 
dispensers  of  divine  power. 

The  character  of  most  people  is  largely  compounded 
of  a  variety  of  different  sentiments.  The  emotional  re¬ 
sponse  in  any  particular  situation  may  be  produced  by 
the  action  of  the  situation  on  any  one  of  these.  It  hap- 


CONSCIOUS  PROCESSES 


101 


pens  sometimes  that  one  of  the  sentiments  establishes 
itself  so  much  in  the  predominant  position  that  the 
emotional  responses  of  the  individual  are  called  out 
from  that  one  sentiment  alone.  An  example  of  this  is 
when  the  sentiment  of  love  attains  such  a  predomi¬ 
nance  temporarily.  The  sorrow  felt  at  the  absence  of 
the  object  of  love,  is  sufficient  to  counteract  the  joy 
which  should  have  been  produced  by  the  action  of  the 
environment  on  the  other  sentiments;  or  joy  at  the 
presence  of  the  object  of  love  prevents  the  appearance 
of  sorrow  when  that  would  appear  to  be  the  natural 
response  of  the  other  sentiments  to  other  elements  in 
the  situation. 

Similarly  religion  is  ordinarily  one  amongst  many 
sentiments.  The  emotional  response  of  the  individual 
is  sometimes  called  out  bv  the  action  of  the  situation  on 

IS 

that  sentiment,  sometimes  by  its  action  on  others. 
When  the  religious  sentiment  attains  such  a  predomi¬ 
nance  as  has  just  been  described  for  the  sentiment  of 
love,  we  have  what  is  called  mysticism.  In  the  mystic, 
the  religious  sentiment  has  attained  such  predominance 
that  the  emotional  responses  of  the  mystic  are  called 
out  by  that  sentiment  alone,  as  those  of  the  lover  are  by 
his  sentiment  of  love. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS 

The  attempt  to  deal  with  the  psychology  of  the  un¬ 
conscious  in  the  space  of  one  short  chapter  is  little  less 
ambitious  than  the  aim  of  the  works  one  sometimes  sees 
advertised  which  profess  to  reveal  the  whole  plan  of 
creation  in  a  pamphlet  of  thirty  pages  sold  for  two¬ 
pence.  Practically  the  whole  of  the  modern  psychology 
wdiich  has  been  developed  from  the  study  of  mental 
disorder  is  a  psychology  of  the  unconscious.  The  most 
that  I  can  hope  to  do  in  the  short  space  it  is  possible 
to  devote  to  this  subject  is  to  give  a  sufficiently  clear 
outline  of  the  theory  underlying  this  work  to  enable  us 
to  use  the  conception  of  unconscious  mental  activity  in 
an  intelligent  manner,  and  to  see  how  incomplete  a 
psychology  of  religion  must  necessarily  be  which  ignores 
this  aspect  of  mental  life  altogether. 

Consciousness  is  a  fact  which  cannot  be  defined  but 
which  can  easily  be  understood,  since  we  all  experience 
it.  Some  of  our  conditions  and  activities  are  accom¬ 
panied  by  an  awareness.  We  are,  for  example,  aware  of 
a  feeling  of  fatigue  or  of  a  voluntary  movement.  It  is 
this  accompaniment  of  awareness  that  makes  the  state 
or  activity  a  conscious  one.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  to 
define  psychology  as  the  science  of  consciousness,  and  to 
refuse  to  admit  into  a  psychological  discussion  any  other 
facts  than  facts  of  consciousness.  This,  however,  is  not 
usual  at  the  present  time.  A  large  number  of  facts  have 

102 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS 


103 


been  investigated  which  are  most  simply  accounted  for 
by  admitting  into  psychology  the  idea  of  mental  facts 
whose  principal  difference  from  the  facts  of  conscious¬ 
ness  is  that  they  are  not  accompanied  by  any  awareness 
of  them. 

As  examples,  we  may  take  the  numerous  sensations 
which  at  any  moment  are  not  attended  to.  At  the  pres¬ 
ent  time  you  are  reading  a  book.  The  visual  sensations 
of  the  words  of  that  book  are  conscious  ones.  But  at 
the  same  time,  there  are  numerous  sensations  to  which 
you  are  not  attending,  and  which  seem  hardly  to  enter 
into  consciousness  at  all.  Such  are:  the  feeling  of  the 
pressure  of  your  clothes,  the  ticking  of  the  clock  behind 
you,  and  the  motions  you  are  making  in  breathing. 
They  enter  into  your  total  state  of  consciousness  to 
some  extent;  you  would  notice  their  sudden  removal 
and  you  can  become  aware  of  them  as  soon  as  your  at¬ 
tention  is  directed  towards  them.  As  a  second  example, 
we  may  take  what  happens  in  suggestion.  The  most 
spectacular  case  is  that  of  post-hypnotic  suggestion. 
This  is  a  suggestion  given  in  the  hypnotic  trance  which 
is  to  be  realised  after  the  subject  has  come  out  of  the 
trance.  The  subject  is,  for  example,  ordered  to  take  off 
his  hat  at  a  certain  time.  If  the  experiment  is  success¬ 
ful,  at  the  stated  time  he  does  so,  although  up  to  the  mo¬ 
ment  of  its  performance  he  has  had  no  idea  that  he  has 
received  the  suggestion  at  all.  It  violates  our  usual 
habit  of  thinking  about  causation  to  suppose  that  in  the 
interval  the  suggestion  has  completely  disappeared 
from  the  man’s  mind  and  has  reappeared  from  nowhere 
at  the  time  for  its  realisation.  An  alternative  is  to  sup¬ 
pose  that  it  has  remained  in  the  mind  but  unconsciously. 
The  region  of  the  mind  in  which  it  has  stayed  has 
been  called  the  subconscious,  the  subliminal  and  the 


101 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


unconscious.  It  may  be  noticed  that  in  this  experi¬ 
ment  there  has  also  been  a  subconscious  estimation 
of  time. 

At  one  time  psychologists  recognised  subconscious¬ 
ness  only  of  the  kind  first  mentioned — sensations,  etc., 
which  are  only  outside  consciousness  so  far  as  attention 
is  directed  away  from  them  and  those  which  are  too 
weak  to  enter  consciousness.  But  a  very  much  wider 
kind  of  subconsciousness  is  a  postulate  necessary  in 
order  to  give  a  satisfactory  account  of  such  phenomena 
as  post-hypnotic  suggestion  and  of  a  very  large  number 
of  observations  in  mental  pathology.  Objections  to  the 
conception  of  unconscious  mental  processes  are  urged 
by  some  of  the  older  psychologists  and  by  philosophers. 
I  will  not  discuss  these  in  detail.  •  It  seems  to  me  to  be 
possible  to  formulate  a  conception  of  unconscious  men¬ 
tal  processes  which  is  unobjectionable.  The  empirical 
facts  on  which  the  conception  is  based  cannot  be 
doubted.  Unconscious  mental  processes  are  postulated 
in  order  to  provide  links  to  make  complete  in  thought 
an  otherwise  incomplete  chain  of  mental  causation.  As 
empirical  psychologists,  we  need  claim  no  more  reality 
for  them  than  that. 

We  will  now  consider  a  few  different  conceptions  of 
unconscious  mentality.  The  words  subconscious  and 
subliminal  and  the  ideas  connected  with  them  were  first 
made  popular  by  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  He  compared  the 
human  mind  with  a  spectrum,  and  regarded  conscious¬ 
ness  as  comparable  with  the  visible  part  of  the  spectrum, 
and  such  organic  processes  as  are  unconscious  he  com¬ 
pared  with  the  infra-red  part  of  the  spectrum.  From 
the  part  of  our  life  comparable  with  the  ultra-violet 
come  the  insight  of  the  poet  and  the  inspiration  of  the 
prophet,  religion,  mysticism  and  love.  Myers  says: 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS 


105 


It  is  that  prolongation  of  our  spectrum  upon  which 
our  gaze  will  need  to  be  most  strenuously  fixed.  It  is 
there  that  we  shall  find  our  inquiry  opening  upon  the 
cosmic  prospect,  and  inciting  us  upon  an  endless  way. 

This  region  has  often  been  called  the  supraconscious. 
It  is  unfortunate  that  this  conception  has  been  so  popu¬ 
lar.  The  supraconscious,  uprushings  from  the  sublimi¬ 
nal  self,  and  so  on,  are  terms  dear  to  writers  on  mysti¬ 
cism.  Once  the  phraseology  has  been  mastered,  won¬ 
derful  possibilities  are  open  to  the  writer  or  preacher  to 
whom  flights  of  imagination  are  more  congenial  than 
clear  thinking  and  the  severity  of  the  scientific  method. 
There  is  no  limit  to  what  may  be  said  about  the  spiritual 
life  by  such  writers,  for  in  the  supraconscious  contradic¬ 
tion  is  as  impossible  as  verification.  The  objection  to  it 
all  is  that,  as  a  fact,  it  is  founded  on  no  sort  of  scientific 
evidence  at  all.  Anyone  can  say  anything  he  likes  about 
it  because  it  is  a  region  of  which  no  one  knows  anything, 
not  even  its  existence. 

This  vogue  of  the  supraconscious  in  religious  writing 
has  been  unfortunate  because  it  has  turned  attention 
away  from  the  more  firmly  grounded  part  of  the  work 
of  F.  W.  H.  Myers,  and  from  the  real  value  to  religious 
psychology  of  the  investigations  in  mental  pathology. 
It  is  to  these  latter  that  I  wish  to  drawT  your  attention 
now.  Unconscious  regions  of  the  mind  can  be  investi¬ 
gated  scientifically  and  it  is  possible  to  find  out  a  great 
deal  about  their  nature  and  the  laws  of  their  operations. 
No  statement  about  the  mysteries  of  the  subliminal 
which  is  not  based  on  the  results  of  such  investigations 
is  worth  any  more  than  the  speculations  of  pre-scientific 
astronomy  about  the  influence  of  the  stars  on  our 
fortunes. 


106 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


It  has  been  made  a  reproach  against  the  whole  of  this 
kind  of  psychology  that  it  is  founded  on  the  study  of 
diseased  minds.  That  is  true,  and  it  is  probable  that 
exaggerations  have  sometimes  been  the  result  of  taking 
over  into  normal  psychology  conceptions  which  had 
their  place  only  in  mental  disease.  Yet  this  objection  is 
not  a  very  serious  one.  Diseased  minds  show  the  same 
general  characteristics  as  healthy  ones,  and  it  is  their 
lack  of  balance  which  enables  us  to  distinguish  in  them 
processes  which  are  present  in  healthy  ones.  We  need 
only  observe  the  very  obvious  precaution  of  verifying 
their  existence  in  healthy  minds.  In  other  words,  it  is 
no  reproach  to  the  psychology  of  mental  pathology  that 
it  draws  its  conceptions  from  a  study  of  persons  in  a 
state  of  mental  ill-health  since  it  can  be  proved  by 
observation  that  these  same  conceptions  give  us  satis¬ 
factory  explanations  of  the  workings  of  the  minds  of 
ordinary  persons. 

A  very  good  idea  of  the  early  position  of  this  school  of 
psychologists  may  be  obtained  by  reading  Binet’s 
Alterations  of  Personality,  or  any  similar  work  of  the 
French  psychiatrists,  written  during  the  last  thirty 
years.  In  such  a  book,  an  investigation  into  the  opera¬ 
tions  of  the  subconscious  mind  and  its  laws  of  working 
will  be  found.  It  will  be  found  that  subconscious  action 
is  recognised  in  the  working  of  suggestion,  in  the  pro¬ 
duction  of  hallucinations,  in  somnambulisms  and  in  all 
the  phenomena  of  hysteria.  A  study  of  these  works, 
however,  leaves  us  vaguely  dissatisfied.  They  are  de¬ 
scriptive  of  the  subconscious  mind,  but  they  are  not  ex¬ 
planatory.  One  seems  to  be  confronted  with  a  vast 
number  of  facts,  whose  connection  and  causation  are  not 
explained.  One  feels  that,  perhaps,  the  key  to  the  riddle 
lies  in  the  answer  to  a  question  to  which  psychology  at 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS 


107 


that  time  had  found  no  reply.  This  question  is :  “Why 
is  there  any  subconscious?”  The  attempt  to  an¬ 
swer  it  was  made  by  Professor  Sigmund  Freud  of 
Vienna. 

Freud’s  contributions  to  psychology  have  met  with 
a  very  bitter  opposition  from  a  certain  number  of  psy¬ 
chologists  and  doctors,  and  from  many  more  people  who 
are  neither.  They  have  been  attacked  on  moral,  on 
aesthetic  and  on  scientific  grounds.  The  intensity  of 
this  opposition  makes  it  rather  difficult  to  estimate  the 
importance  and  the  value  of  his  work.  On  the  whole,  I 
am  inclined  to  judge  that  it  is  very  easily  the  most  im¬ 
portant  contribution  to  the  science  of  psychology  that 
has  ever  been  made  by  one  man.  He  has  for  the  first 
time  given  us  an  explanation  of  the  significance  of  the 
unconscious,  upon  the  brink  of  which  the  French  psy¬ 
chiatrists  seemed  often  to  be,  although  they  never 
reached  it.  He  has  also  given  us  a  method  by  which  the 
investigation  of  the  unconscious  can  be  carried  out.  The 
immense  value  of  Freud's  work  can  be  illustrated,  as  I 
try  to  illustrate  it  in  a  later  chapter,  by  comparing  the 
insight  it  gives  us  into  the  psychic  mechanisms  at  work 
in  conversion  with  the  amount  of  insight  one  could  have 
when  all  that  could  be  said  about  conversion  from  the 
psychological  point  of  view  was  that  it  was  due  to 
the  subconscious  germination  of  something,  without 
any  explanation  of  why  it  germinated  or  why  it  was 
subconscious. 

I  do  not  wish  it  to  be  supposed  that  I  am  recommend¬ 
ing  a  complete  acceptance  of  the  whole  Freudian  posi¬ 
tion.  The  very  isolation  into  which  the  thought  of 
Freud  was  forced  by  his  long  boycott  by  other  wmrkers 
in  the  same  subject  has  produced  the  prejudice,  the 
exaggerations  and  the  dogmatism  in  the  work  of  Freud- 


108  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

ians  which  are  always  the  result  of  intellectual  isolation. 
But,  at  the  same  time,  it  will  be  as  impossible  for  a 
psychologist  of  the  future  to  ignore  the  work  of  Freud, 
as  it  would  have  been  for  a  biologist  in  the  nineteenth 
century  to  have  ignored  the  work  of  Darwin. 

The  terminology  introduced  by  Freud  is  very  largely 
new,  and  is  not  always  very  convenient.  He  does  not 
use  the  words  subconscious  or  subliminal  at  all.  He 
uses  preconscious  to  describe  that  part  of  the  mind  con¬ 
sisting  of  mental  elements  and  processes  which  are  not 
present  to  consciousness  at  the  time,  but  which  could  be 
made  conscious  by  a  direction  of  attention  to  them. 
Such  are :  the  feeling  of  the  pressure  of  the  clothes  while 
the  mind  is  directed  towards  something  else,  or  a  name 
which  happens  not  to  be  in  your  mind  because  you  are 
not  thinking  about  it,  but  which  you  would  remember 
at  once  if  you  did  think  about  it,  as,  for  example,  the 
name  of  the  town  in  which  you  are  at  present  living. 
For  things  which  are  actually  present  in  the  mind  but 
which  cannot  be  made  conscious  by  a  mere  effort  of  the 
attention  (although  they  can  in  certain  other  ways)  he 
uses  the  word  unconscious.  As  an  example  of  an  uncon¬ 
scious  mental  fact  we  may  take  the  name  which  you 
ought  to  know  but  which  obstinately  escapes  you  when 
you  try  to  recall  it.  Freud  thus  recognises  three  regions 
of  mind — the  conscious,  the  preconscious  and  the  un¬ 
conscious.1  It  is  his  treatment  of  the  unconscious  which 
is  the  original  part  of  his  theory. 

1  The  confusion  of  thought  which  some  of  Freud’s  followers  cause 
themselves  by  a  loose  use  of  this  terminology  is  almost  unbeliev¬ 
able.  There  is  a  small  popular  handbook  on  the  Freudian  psychol¬ 
ogy  in  which  the  author,  in  the  course  of  one  short  paragraph,  uses 
the  word  “consciousness”  in  three  different  senses:  (1)  in  the  re¬ 
stricted  sense,  (2)  to  mean  the  conscious  plus  the  'preconscious, 
and  (3)  to  mean  the  conscious  plus  the  preconscious  plus  the 
unconscious. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS 


109 


In  discussing  Freud’s  theory  of  the  unconscious,  it  is 
quite  impossible  in  a  short  space  to  give  any  adequate 
idea  of  the  evidence  on  which  it  is  based.  A  condensed 
and  readable  account  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  first 
fifteen  chapters  of  his  Introductory  Lectures  on  Psycho¬ 
analysis.1  I  will  try  to  give  a  brief  account  in  turn  of 
the  three  most  important  items  in  his  theory  of  the 
unconscious.  These  are:  the  method  by  which  mental 
material  becomes  unconscious,  the  contents  of  the  un¬ 
conscious,  and  the  methods  by  which  the  unconscious 
can  be  unearthed. 

The  method  bv  which  material  becomes  unconscious 
is  what  Freud  calls  repression.  It  will  be  easier  to  follow 
what  I  am  going  to  say  about  this  if  I  give  an  example 
of  repression  first  and  a  more  general  account  of  it  after¬ 
wards.  It  was  a  belief  of  the  older  psychologists  that 
things  disappeared  from  our  memories  because  they 
were  weak,  and  because  they  called  up  no  strong  feel¬ 
ing.  That  is  true  of  some  forgetting,  but  not  of  all. 
During  the  war  it  was  not  uncommon  for  a  man  to  pass 
through  some  terrible  experience  which  was  accom¬ 
panied  by  the  strongest  possible  feelings,  and  for  that 
experience  to  be  absolutely  obliterated  from  his  mem¬ 
ory  soon  afterwards.  This  wTas  the  cause  of  a  good 
many  cases  of  “shell-shock.”  No  effort  to  remember 
could  enable  such  a  man  to  recover  his  lost  memory.  It 
had  disappeared  from  his  conscious  mind  as  completely 
as  if  the  incident  had  never  happened.  Yet  it  clearly 
had  not  gone  from  his  mind  as  a  whole.  It  influenced 
his  conduct,  his  mental  health  and  his  dreams.  The 
disappearance  was  not  the  result  of  any  voluntary 
effort,  to  forget — it  was  unwitting.  Any  such  effort 
would  have  been  ineffectual.  This  is  a  simple  case  of 

1  London,  1922. 


110  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


repression.  It  is  an  unwitting  process  by  which  the 
mind  relegates  to  the  unconscious  painful  memories, 
painful  conflicts,  and  the  wishes  whose  presence  in  con¬ 
sciousness  would  be  painful  because  of  the  impossibil¬ 
ity  or  undesirability  of  fulfilling  them.  The  word  sup¬ 
pression  is  used  of  the  witting  refusal  to  translate  into 
action  the  impulses  to  undesirable  courses  of  action 
(such  as  certain  impulses  of  the  primitive  instincts). 
Suppression  of  such  impulses  is  followed  either  by  their 
repression  or  by  their  sublimation.1  One  of  the  practi¬ 
cal  problems  of  religion  is  to  provide  an  effective  means 
of  sublimation  so  that  the  process  of  repression  (which 
is  liable  to  produce  mental  disorder)  may  be  avoided. 

The  contents  of  the  unconscious  are  such  repressed 
memories  and  conflicts,  and  those  animal  and  infantile 
elements  in  our  psyche  which  are  incompatible  with  the 
demands  of  civilisation.  These  superseded  primitive 
elements  consist  in  large  part  of  the  unchecked  im¬ 
pulses  of  our  instincts.  In  the  unconscious,  the  egoistic 
impulse  exists  with  the  ruthless  disregard  for  the  needs 
of  other  people  which  is  characteristic  of  the  young 
child.  The  sex-impulse  makes  its  demands  with  the 
disregard  for  the  requirements  of  morality  which  be¬ 
longs  to  a  much  more  primitive  stage  of  evolution. 
There  is  nothing  disgusting  about  this.  The  important 
thing  ethically  is  that  these  libidinous  impulses  of  the 
instincts  are  suppressed.  We  have  risen  from  primitive 
morality  by  our  relegation  to  the  unconscious  of  these 
impulses.  The  structure  of  the  unconscious  shows  the 
stages  of  our  evolution  in  much  the  same  way  as  the 
vermiform  appendix. 

The  unconscious  shows  itself  by  its  influence  on  con¬ 
duct  and  by  its  effect  on  dreams.  We  have  already  had 

‘Cf.  pp.  112  and  124. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS 


111 


examples  of  the  effect  of  the  unconscious  on  conduct  in 
the  discussion  of  rationalisation.  You  will  remember 
that  we  met  with  examples  of  conduct  which  were  really 
determined  by  unconscious  motives,  for  which  the  mind 
made  rationalisations  in  order  to  avoid  the  recognition 
of  the  repressed  motive.  Another  kind  of  conduct  to 
which  Freud  draws  attention  is  that  class  of  mistakes 
which  are  found  on  analysis  to  have  an  unconscious 
motive,  such  as  the  losing  of  a  present  given  to  us  by 
someone  we  dislike,  or  the  accidental  leaving  of  articles 
at  the  house  of  someone  we  wish  to  revisit.  These 
cases  sound  fanciful,  but  I  think  it  is  possible  to  con¬ 
vince  ourselves  of  the  reality  of  the  unconscious  motive 
in  a  large  number  of  our  own  mistakes  if  we  examine 
them  carefully.  An  adequate  account  of  the  Freudian 
theory  of  dreams  would  take  a  longer  space  than  we 
can  spare  now.  Essentially  they  are  regarded  by  him 
as  disguised  representations  in  the  sleeper’s  conscious¬ 
ness  of  conflicts  in  the  unconscious. 

The  method  of  psvchoanalvsis  is  the  one  which  is 
most  used  in  the  exploration  of  the  unconscious.  We 
wish,  let  us  say,  to  discover  the  fact  in  the  unconscious 
which  finds  expression  in  a  given  element  in  a  dream. 
The  subject  is  asked  to  relax  his  body  and,  starting  from 
the  element  in  question,  to  say  whatever  comes  into  his 
head  without  any  exercise  at  all  of  his  critical  faculty. 
If  this  is  carried  out  correctly,  it  is  believed  that  he  is  led 
in  the  end  to  the  unconscious  thought  of  which  he  is  in 
search.  It  is  probable  that  this  method  depends  in  part 
,  on  the  subject  being  in  an  hypnoidal  condition.  A  diffi¬ 
culty  is  found  in  reaching  the  required  unconscious 
thought  in  psychoanalysis.  The  subject  fails  to  find 
any  association,  or  has  reasoned  objections  to  the 
process.  This  difficulty  is  called  resistance.  It  is 


112  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


the  result  of  the  fact  that  the  thought  in  question  is 
repressed. 

There  is  one  other  conception  in  psychoanalysis  which 
we  shall  find  of  value.  It  was  pointed  out  that  the  un¬ 
conscious  wras  the  seat  of  libidinous  instinctive  desires. 
The  energy  of  these  repressed  desires  can  be  utilised  by 
the  mind  for  other  purposes,  and  the  enthusiasm  for  art, 
for  religion  and  for  work  of  all  kinds  is  supposed  to  be 
made  possible  by  the  utilisation  for  such  higher  pur¬ 
poses  of  the  energy  of  these  instinctive  desires.  This 
process  of  the  utilisation  for  higher  ends  of  energy  de¬ 
rived  from  the  repression  of  instincts  is  called  subli¬ 
mation. 

Freud  gives  an  illustration  of  the  relation  of  the  un¬ 
conscious,  the  preconscious  and  the  conscious,  which 
(although  it  makes  no  claim  to  be  satisfactory  in  all 
respects)  may  help  to  make  his  meaning  clear.  He 
imagines  consciousness  as  an  observer  in  a  small  room. 
This  room  is  the  preconscious.  It  is  curtained  off  from 
a  larger  room  which  is  the  unconscious.  This  room  is 
full  of  people  whom  it  is  undesirable  that  the  observer 
in  the  small  room  should  see.  The  resistance  which  pre¬ 
vents  them  from  coming  into  the  smaller  room  is  sup¬ 
plied  by  a  man  at  the  curtain  who  refuses  to  allow  the 
undesirable  people  to  pass  him.  He  is  what  Freud  calls 
the  censorship.  If  someone  passes  the  censorship,  he 
enters  the  small  room,  but,  of  course,  he  will  not  be  seen 
unless  the  observer  happens  to  look  at  him.  A  thought 
entering  the  preconscious  does  not  become  conscious 
unless  attention  is  directed  towards  it.  In  the  same 
illustration,  Freud’s  theory  of  the  dream  would  be  that 
in  sleep  the  vigilance  of  the  doorkeeper  was  to  some 
extent  relaxed  so  that  he  allowed  the  undesirable  people 
to  pass  him  if  they  did  so  in  such  disguise  that  they 
would  not  be  recognised  by  the  observer. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS 


113 


For  the  sake  of  simplicity  and  brevity,  I  have  given 
Freud’s  own  views  without  pointing  out  where  they 
may  be  criticised.  It  is  necessary,  however,  to  mention 
that  even  those  who  agree  with  his  main  conceptions 
would  not  accept  everything  I  have  described.  Dr 
Rivers,  for  example,  considers  that  the  whole  conception 
of  the  censorship  is  misleading,  and  he  regards  as  a 
fantastic  and  unnecessary  explanation  the  idea  that  the 
dream  is  a  disguise  to  evade  the  censorship. 

I  need  hardly  point  out  how  very  far  removed  is  the 
unconscious  which  scientific  investigation  reveals  to  us 
from  the  subliminal  of  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  It  is,  however, 
the  only  subconscious  we  have  any  right  to  use  in  the 
psychology  of  religion,  if  our  aim  is  to  make  its  study 
scientific. 

I  will  not  go  in  detail  into  the  ways  in  which  the  con¬ 
ception  of  the  unconscious  has  a  bearing  on  the  prob¬ 
lems  of  religious  psychology.  It  will  be  more  conven¬ 
ient  to  consider  these  problems  as  they  arise  in  the 
course  of  later  chapters  and  to  be  content  now  with  the 
attempt  to  make  the  conception  of  the  unconscious 
clear.  We  have  already  met  with  points  where  it  was 
necessary  to  postulate  something  more  than  conscious 
processes  of  mind.  An  example  to  which  I  have  already 
referred  in  the  course  of  the  present  chapter,  is  when  an 
intellectual  chain  of  reasoning  appears  as  a  disguise  for 
an  affective  determination  of  an  opinion  or  a  course  of 
conduct.  In  general,  we  may  say  that  introspection 
does  not  necessarily  give  us  a  true  account  of  the  rea¬ 
sons  for  an  action  or  an  opinion,  since  introspection  re¬ 
veals  only  the  elements  which  are  conscious.  This  is  an 
important  fact  for  the  psychology  of  religion,  since  it 
shows  howT  hopeless  must  be  the  attempt  to  obtain  our 
data  from  introspection  alone.  We  must  draw  our  con- 


114  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


elusions  from  a  study  of  religious  behaviour  as  well  as 
from  what  religious  people  tell  us. 

A  second  example  of  unconscious  mental  action  which 
we  have  already  met  is  suggestion.  The  essential  part 
of  suggestion,  the  process  by  which  the  suggestion  re¬ 
ceived  is  transformed  into  an  opinion  or  an  action,  is  not 
conscious.  For  this  reason,  suggestion  has  been  defined 
as  the  subconscious  realisation  of  an  idea.  This  is  a  sim¬ 
pler  definition  than  the  one  previously  given,  and  has 
the  advantage  of  leaving  open  the  question  whether  the 
idea  was  received  from  someone  else,  was  originated 
deliberately  by  the  person  in  whose  mind  it  appears, 
or  was  originated  by  himself  accidentally. 

A  third  point  in  connection  with  the  unconscious  I 
wish  to  discuss  here  is  symbolism.  The  manner  of 
thinking,  which  we  may  call  directed  thinking,  is  a  vol¬ 
untary  activity.  It  employs  mostly  words,  and  is  a 
function  acquired  late  in  evolution.  A  more  primitive 
kind  of  thinking  in  which  words  are  replaced  by  concrete 
images  is  developed  when  the  mind  is  in  the  condition  of 
reverie,  and  is,  according  to  the  psychoanalysts,  found 
in  the  unconscious.  This  is  more  nearly  allied  to  the 
manner  of  thinking  of  primitive  peoples,  as  is  shown  by 
the  construction  of  their  language,  and  is  probably  the 
way  we  thought  in  early  childhood.1  It  is,  of  course,  the 
way  we  think  in  dreams  now.  If  an  image  has  a  fairly 
uniform  meaning  for  different  people  it  is  called  a  sym¬ 
bol.  Unconscious  thinking  tends  to  use  symbols.  That 
is  one  explanation  of  the  very  large  part  symbolism 
plays  in  religion  (I  shall  point  out  later  that  it  is  not  the 
whole  explanation).  We  all  know  that  if  we  wish  to 

1  The  term,  the  infantile  psyche,  is  often  used  for  that  part  of 
the  mind  of  a  grown-up  person  which  thinks  and  reacts  in  this 
infantile  way  now. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS 


115 


appeal  to  something  more  than  the  surface  of  the  minds 
of  an  audience  we  must  speak  in  symbols.  No  reasoned 
justification  of  the  British  Empire  or  of  Karl  Marx’s 
social  theories  will  make  the  same  appeal  to  an  audience 
as  a  vague  phrase  about  the  glorious  Union  Jack  upon 
which  the  sun  never  sets  or  about  the  red  flag  which 
waves  the  way  to  freedom.  These  are  symbols,  and 
however  meaningless  they  may  appear  when  intellectu¬ 
ally  analysed  they  have  a  strong  affective  appeal  be¬ 
cause  their  appeal  reaches  the  unconscious  processes  of 
thought.  This  suggests  a  reason  why  it  is  not  really 
practical  wisdom  to  try  to  reduce  the  symbolism  of  a 
religion,  however  foolish  parts  of  that  symbolism  may 
sometimes  appear  to  our  intelligence.  A  reduction  of 
symbolism  means  a  weakening  of  the  hold  religion  has 
on  the  unconscious  modes  of  thinking,  and  therefore  its 
particular  weakening  of  those  whose  powder  of  directed 
thinking  is  not  very  highly  developed. 

A  good  example  of  this  kind  of  thinking  in  religion  is 
provided  by  the  authors  of  a  recently  published  work 
on  an  Indian  mystic.  They  say:  “he  thinks  in  pictures. 
For  him  an  analogy  or  illustration  is  not  merely  a  means 
to  establish  an  argument  ;  it  is  often  the  argument  it¬ 
self.’’  1  Such  an  illustration  is  provided  a  few  pages 
later. 

At  one  time  I  was  a  good  deal  perplexed  about  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  I  had  thought  of  three  sep¬ 
arate  Persons  sitting  as  it  were  on  three  thrones;  but 
it  was  all  made  plain  to  me  in  a  Vision.  I  entered  in 
an  Ecstasy  into  the  third  heaven.  I  was  told  that  it 
was  the  same  to  which  St  Paul  was  caught  up.  And 
there  I  saw  Christ  in  a  glorious  spiritual  body  sitting 

1  The  Sadhu,  by  Streeter  and  Appasamy,  p.  53. 


116 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


on  a  throne.  .  .  .  The  first  time  I  entered  Heaven  I 
looked  round  about  and  I  asked,  “But  where  is  God?” 
And  they  told  me,  “God  is  not  to  be  seen  here  any 
more  than  on  earth,  for  God  is  Infinite.  But  there  is 
Christ,  He  is  God,  He  is  the  image  of  the  Invisible 
God,  and  it  is  only  in  Him  that  we  can  see  God,  in 
heaven  as  on  earth.”  And  streaming  out  from  Christ 
I  saw,  as  it  were,  waves  shining  and  peace-giving,  and 
going  through  and  among  the  Saints  and  Angels,  and 
everywhere  bringing  refreshment,  just  as  in  hot 
weather  water  refreshes  trees.  And  this  I  understood 
to  be  the  Holy  Spirit.1 

The  weakness  of  this  kind  of  thinking  lies  in  its 
freedom  from  the  possibility  of  logical  testing.  It  is 
only  so  far  as  doctrines  can  be  translated  into  words 
that  we  can  argue  about  their  truth  or  falsity.  I  am 
by  no  means  satisfied  that  his  biographers  are  just  to 
the  Sadhu  when  they  say  that  an  analogy  or  illustra¬ 
tion  is  for  him  itself  an  argument.  So  far  as  in  re¬ 
ligious  thinking  apt  illustration  replaces  argument, 
such  thinking  lays  itself  open  to  the  charge  of 
infantility. 

1  The  Sadhu,  by  Streeter  and  Appasamy,  pp.  55  and  56. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  INSTINCTS 

When  we  have  grasped  the  distinction  between  an 
emotion  (an  actual  experience)  and  a  sentiment  (a 
mental  disposition  determining  that  experience),  we  are 
naturally  led  to  ask  ourselves  whether  the  sentiments 
are  produced  by  experience  in  a  mental  organisation  it¬ 
self  formless,  or  whether  there  are  behind  them  mental 
and  neural  dispositions  which  determined  their  starting 
and  influenced  their  growth.  If  we  consider  the  devel¬ 
oped  character  as  a  complex  building  of  which  the  senti¬ 
ments  are  the  constituent  parts  (the  wTalls,  the  roof, 
etc.),  we  may  ask  whether  the  original  lines  of  the  walls 
merely  followed  the  caprice  of  the  builder  or  whether  he 
was  working  on  previously  existing  foundations  whose 
form  we  may  deduce  by  a  study  of  the  existing  structure 
of  the  building.  It  is  now  generally  supposed  that  there 
are  such  dispositions  in  the  mental  organisation  of  man 
which  determine  very  largely  the  influence  of  experience 
in  the  development  of  his  mind.  These  are  called 
instincts.  Instincts  are  the  innate  mental  dispositions 
which  are  common  to  all  the  members  of  any  one  spe¬ 
cies.  They  play  a  large  part  in  determining  the  behav¬ 
iour  of  the  lower  animals;  and  so  far  as  man  is  influ¬ 
enced  by  instincts,  these  are  an  inheritance  from  his 
animal  ancestry. 

Before  going  on  to  discuss  the  bearing  of  the  psy¬ 
chology  of  instinct  on  our  subject,  we  may  notice  the 
extraordinary  looseness  with  which  the  word  is  com- 

117 


118 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


monly  used,  even  by  persons  who  make  some  claim  to 
exact  thinking.  It  is,  for  example,  clearly  at  variance 
with  the  plain  meaning  of  the  word  to  use  it  for  any 
activity  which  is  developed  only  on  a  high  level  of  cul¬ 
ture,  and  even  more  incorrect  to  use  it  for  anything  de¬ 
veloped  during  any  individual’s  life-time.  Yet  it  is  not 
unusual  to  hear  people  speak  of  the  Englishman’s 
instinctive  love  of  fair  play,  or  to  read  of  a  chess  player 
who  makes  the  correct  moves  by  instinct,  while  many 
people  justify  all  their  irrational  prejudices  in  politics 
by  an  appeal  to  a  vague  instinct.  In  no  subject  has  this 
vagueness  and  inaccuracy  been  more  common  than  in 
the  psychological  study  of  religion. 

In  our  definition  of  instinct,  we  spoke  of  it  as  innate. 
It  is  inherited,  not  acquired  during  the  individual’s  own 
life-time.  This  serves  to  distinguish  an  instinct  from  a 
habit.  Shaving,  for  example,  however  mechanically  it 
may  be  performed,  is  a  habit  and  not  an  instinct,  since 
it  is  entirely  acquired  during  the  individual’s  life,  and 
owes  nothing  to  heredity.  An  instinct  is  a  mental  dis¬ 
position.  We  speak  of  instinctive  behaviour,  instinctive 
emotions,  etc.,  but  the  word  instinct  itself  refers  neither 
to  the  behaviour  nor  to  the  emotion  but  to  the  disposi¬ 
tion  to  behave,  to  feel,  etc.,  in  this  particular  way  in  the 
particular  circumstances. 

There  is  little  doubt  that  the  emotions  and  behaviour 
of  the  lower  animals  are  determined  by  that  something 
innate  in  their  physiological  and  mental  make-up,  to 
which  we  give  the  name  of  instinct.  We  have  all  noticed 
the  intense  emotion  produced  in  a  dog  by  the  objects  of 
his  emotions.  He  quivers  with  excitement  when  his 
hunting  instinct  is  aroused,  and  shows  anger  when  his 
instinct  of  aggression  leads  him  to  fight  with  other  dogs. 
Equally  clear  is  the  uniformity  of  the  impulse  to  be- 


THE  INSTINCTS 


119 


haviour  dictated  by  instinct.  Ordinarily  the  dog  will 
give  chase  as  soon  as  he  sees  a  rabbit.  Even  if  he  has 
been  trained  not  to  do  so  and  this  impulse  to  give  chase 
is  checked,  the  existence  of  the  inhibited  impulse  is  clear 
to  an  observer  of  the  dog’s  behaviour.  Are  the  thought 
and  conduct  of  man  also  determined  by  innate  disposi¬ 
tions,  or  are  such  dispositions  as  we  find  in  him  acquired 
during  the  course  of  his  life?  This  is  a  question  which 
must  be  faced  seriously  by  the  student  of  the  psychology 
of  religion,  for  if  the  behaviour  and  emotions  of  man  are 
determined  to  any  considerable  extent  by  instinct,  we 
can  attain  only  a  very  superficial  understanding  of  the 
behaviour  and  the  emotions  found  in  religion,  unless  we 
study  something  of  the  instincts  which  might  influence 
them. 

Before  evolutionary  biological  theory  had  won  general 
acceptance,  the  answer  to  this  question  was  supposed  to 
be  a  simple  one.  The  piety  of  the  middle  of  the  last  cen¬ 
tury  used  to  say  that  God  had  endowed  the  animals  with 
instinct  and  man  with  reason.  It  was  generally  assumed 
that  the  mental  lives  of  animals  and  men  were  so  differ¬ 
ent  that  no  common  factor  could  be  found  in  them. 
More  recent  psychology,  however,  has  shown  a  steady 
tendency  to  move  away  from  this  position,  and  the  im¬ 
portance  of  the  instincts  in  determining  the  behaviour 
and  the  thought  of  men  has  been  increasingly  recog¬ 
nised. 

Let  us  review  briefly  the  psychological  facts  on  which 
this  opinion  is  based.  It  is  true  that,  compared  with  the 
young  of  other  animals,  the  human  baby  comes  into  the 
world  in  a  very  helpless  condition.  This  fact  might  be 
used  to  support  the  opinion  that  it  had  no  innate  dispo¬ 
sitions  to  guide  it,  but  acquired  them  (perhaps  by  the 
teaching  of  its  mother)  as  its  intelligence  grew.  This, 


120  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

however,  is  a  conclusion  more  extreme  than  the  facts 
justify.  The  baby  has  the  instinct  of  nutrition  devel¬ 
oped  to  a  small  extent  (but  as  much  as  is  required  for  its 
own  preservation)  in  the  sucking  reflex.  Other  instincts 
are  developed  later.  It  may  be  noticed  that  for  a  dispo¬ 
sition  to  be  innate,  it  is  not  necessary  that  it  should  be 
operative  immediately  after  birth.  The  sexual  instinct, 
which  is  perhaps  the  most  marked  innate  psychophysi¬ 
cal  disposition  which  man  shares  with  the  animals,  is  not 
fully  developed  until  many  years  of  his  life  have  elapsed. 

It  is  when  wre  turn  to  the  simple  activities  of  man, 
which  are  most  nearly  related  to  those  of  the  lower  ani¬ 
mals,  when  we  watch  him  hunting,  fighting  or  making 
love,  that  we  see  most  clearly  the  traces  of  a  set  of  men¬ 
tal  dispositions  which  do  not  seem  to  be  at  bottom  dif¬ 
ferent  from  those  of  the  animals.  Even  in  such  high- 
level  activities  as  his  social  organisations,  we  may  see  at 
wTork  the  same  instincts  as  are  found  to  bind  together  the 
herd  of  gregarious  animals.  Much  more  obviously, 
many  an  undergraduate  who  walks  down  King’s  Parade 
in  a  yellow  waistcoat  during  the  Easter  Term  is  doing 
the  same  thing,  at  the  same  time  of  the  year  and  for  the 
same  reason,  as  the  peacock  displaying  his  tail. 

In  our  consideration  of  the  instincts  which  influence 
human  life,  we  may  conveniently  follow  a  classification 
adopted  by  Dr  Rivers  in  his  Instinct  and  the  Uncon¬ 
scious.1  He  divides  them  into  three  groups:  those  con¬ 
nected  with  the  preservation  of  the  individual,  the  race 
and  the  herd,  respectively. 

The  instincts  which  have  for  their  object  the  preser¬ 
vation  of  the  individual  include  both  those  which  sub¬ 
serve  principally  the  end  of  nutrition,  and  also  those 
which  determine  his  conduct  in  danger  ( e.g .  the  instinct 

*pp.  51  and  52. 


THE  INSTINCTS 


121 


of  flight  and  of  aggression).  We  may  group  these  under 
the  name  of  the  instincts  of  self-preservation.  The 
individual  deficient  in  these  instincts  would,  in  a  wild 
state,  be  quickly  eliminated  by  starving  to  death  or  by 
falling  a  prey  to  some  other  animal. 

There  are,  however,  other  very  strong  instincts  which 
have  no  survival  value  to  the  individual  possessing 
them.  The  sex-instinct  and  the  parental  instinct  are 
examples.  Any  particular  animal  deficient  in  these  in¬ 
stincts  would  be  in  no  way  handicapped  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.  Its  chance  of  survival  would  indeed  be 
increased,  for  it  would  be  free  from  the  dangers  to  which 
these  two  instincts  frequently  expose  their  possessors. 
Many  a  wild  mother  must  have  been  torn  to  pieces  be¬ 
cause  she  attempted  to  save  her  young,  when  she  might 
have  survived  if  she  had  taken  to  flight;  and  many  male 
individuals  must  have  been  sacrificed  to  the  sex-instinct, 
when  they  have  lost  their  lives  in  a  combat  for  the  fe¬ 
male  which  common  prudence  (the  warning  voice  of  the 
instincts  of  self-preservation)  would  have  counselled 
them  to  avoid.  Yet,  in  spite  of  the  dangers  to  which 
they  expose  the  individual,  these  two  instincts  are  of 
fundamental  importance  for  the  survival  of  the  race.  If 
any  species  of  animal,  whose  young  need  the  care  of  the 
mother  for  some  time  after  birth,  were  to  produce 
females  deficient  in  the  maternal  instinct,  that  species 
would  quickly  die  out,  through  the  failure  of  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  new  generation  to  survive.  In  the  same  way, 
a  race  of  animals  would  die  out  through  failure  to  pro¬ 
duce  offspring  if  its  members  were  deficient  in  the  sex- 
instinct. 

Gregarious  animals  have  also  a  set  of  instincts  which 
have  as  their  object  the  preservation  of  the  herd.  We 
may  imagine  a  herd  of  animals  whose  members  pos- 


122 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


sessed  only  those  instincts  directed  towards  the  preser¬ 
vation  of  the  individual,  so  that  when  the  herd  was  in 
danger  each  was  concerned  only  with  his  own  safety  and 
not  with  that  of  the  herd.  It  is  clear  that  such  a  herd 
would  be  very  helpless  compared  with  one  in  which  each 
individual  was  ready  to  sacrifice  himself  for  the  safety 
of  the  herd  as  a  whole.  The  classical  description  of  the 
gregarious  instinct  is  the  account  of  the  Damara  oxen  in 
Galton’s  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty .  He  describes 
how  the  ox,  although  it  seems  to  have  little  affection  for, 
or  individual  interest  in,  its  fellows 

cannot  endure  even  a  momentary  severance  from  his 
herd.  If  he  be  separated  from  it  by  stratagem  or  force, 
he  exhibits  every  sign  of  mental  agony;  he  strives 
with  all  his  might  to  get  back  again,  and  when  he  suc¬ 
ceeds,  he  plunges  into  its  middle  to  bathe  his  whole 
body  with  the  comfort  of  closest  companionship. 

Galton  himself  was  interested  in  the  Damara  oxen  be¬ 
cause  he  thought  he  saw  a  parallelism  between  their 
behaviour  and  that  of  human  beings.  This  parallelism 
is  now  explained  by  the  assumption  that  they  spring 
from  the  same  instinctive  roots.  The  gregarious  instinct 
is  the  root  from  which  springs  the  human  being’s  un¬ 
easiness  at  separation  or  isolation  from  other  men,  and 
makes  him  sensitive  to  that  influence  of  herd-sugges¬ 
tion  on  which  the  safety  and  the  well-being  of  social 
groups  very  largely  depend.  From  this  root  also  comes 
a  large  part  of  his  altruistic  impulses. 

If  we  acknowledge,  then,  that  man  has  inherited  from 
his  animal  ancestors  these  three  sets  of  instincts,  it 
follows  that  no  account  of  his  psychical  life  (even  in  its 
highest  manifestations)  can  be  complete  without  a  con¬ 
sideration  of  their  influence  upon  him.  But,  while  we 


THE  INSTINCTS 


123 


recognise  that  much  of  his  behaviour  is  not  (at  least  in 
its  beginning)  intelligent  in  the  sense  that*  it  is  deter¬ 
mined  by  previous  experience,  we  must  be  on  our  guard 
against  the  opposite  error  of  exaggerating  the  part 
played  by  instinct  in  the  determination  of  human  be¬ 
haviour.  Probably  it  would  be  such  an  exaggeration  if 
we  were  to  suppose  that  even  in  the  examples  given — of 
fighting,  hunting  and  making  love — we  saw  merely  the 
action  of  unchanged  instincts,  and  that  these  activities 
were  in  no  sense  forms  of  intelligent  behaviour. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  the  history  of  the  mental 
development  of  a  human  being  is  the  history  of  the  re¬ 
placement  of  purely  instinctive  behaviour  by  behaviour 
of  the  same  kind  determined  by  habit,  and  modified  by 
mental  processes  of  the  complex  kind  which  we  may 
describe  as  intelligent  thinking.  It  can  be  shown  that 
an  unexercised  instinct  may  atrophy.  William  James 
points  out  in  his  Principles  of  Psychology  that  a  calf 
prevented  from  sucking  in  the  first  few  days  of  its  life 
does  not  afterwards  begin  to  do  so ;  chickens  shut  away 
from  their  mother  for  eight  or  ten  days  after  hatching 
will  after  that  time  run  away  from  her  instead  of  obey¬ 
ing  her  call.  The  instinct  of  these  animals  seems  to  be 
normally  the  starting-point  of  a  habit.  If  the  habit  is 
not  formed  at  the  proper  time,  the  instinct  disappears  so 
the  habit  cannot  be  acquired  later.  It  is  natural  to  infer 
that  the  instinct  dies  away  in  any  case,  and  that  what  is 
seen  afterwards  is  only  the  habit  formed  on  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  the  instinct.  This  illustrates  the  practical  diffi¬ 
culty  in  making  a  satisfactory  distinction  between  in¬ 
stinctive  behaviour  and  habit.  It  is  clear  that  instincts 
vary  enormously  in  the  extent  to  which  they  die  away  if 
they  are  not  followed  by  the  behaviour  proper  to  them. 
Some  instincts  if  they  are  weakened  by  disuse,  certainly 


124  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


do  not  disappear  completely,  for  their  impulses  remain 
through  the  greater  part  of  life  even  when  they  are 
never  exercised. 

What  is  most  distinctive  of  human  development  is 
the  extent  to  which  the  habits  formed  by  man  on  the 
basis  of  his  instincts  are  modified  by  the  more  complex 
ways  of  behaving  which  he  owes  to  his  higher  mental 
organisation.  His  sex-instinct  may  lead  him  to  marry 
a  wife,  and  to  devote  the  rest  of  his  life  to  the  main¬ 
tenance  and  protection  of  her  and  her  offspring.  In  this 
case,  he  is  forming  on  his  sex-instinct  a  habit  which  is  its 
biological  intention.  But  it  may  also  drive  him  (partic¬ 
ularly  if  his  first  or  repeated  attempts  to  form  a  habit  of 
the  above  kind  are  frustrated)  to  write  poetry,  to  shut 
himself  up  away  from  the  world,  to  devote  himself  to 
scientific  research,  to  paint  pictures,  or  to  engage  in  a 
variety  of  other  activities  which  are  as  remote  as  can 
well  be  imagined  from  the  kinds  of  habit  which  other 
animals  found  on  the  same  instinct.  In  this  case,  we 
may  say  that  he  is  redirecting  the  energy  of  this  instinct 
to  other  (perhaps  we  may  think  to  higher)  ends.  It  is 
now  usual,  when  the  end  is  recognised  to  be  of  value,  to 
call  this  process  sublimation. 

We  now  come  to  the  question :  “Is  the  religious  senti¬ 
ment  based  on  an  instinct,  and  if  so,  on  what  instinct?” 
I  have  asked  “Is  the  religious  sentiment?”  not  “Is 
religion?”  based  on  an  instinct,  because  there  is  a  part 
of  religion — the  rational  element — which  clearly  does 
not  come  into  the  question  at  all.  There  have  been 
several  different  answers  to  this  question.  In  the  first 
place,  some  writers  have  spoken  of  the  religious  instinct 
implying  that  the  religious  sentiment  is  based  on  an 
instinct  specifically  religious.  For  example,  Starbuck 
speaks  of  religion  as  a  deep-rooted  instinct ,  and  com- 


THE  INSTINCTS 


125 


pares  it  with  hunger  and  the  desire  for  exercise.  Others 
have  said  that  religion  is  based  on  an  instinct  indeed, 
but  that  this  instinct  is  the  sex-instinct.  This  has  been 
maintained  by  a  school  of  American  writers  on  the 
psychology  of  religion  who  have  styled  themselves 
erotogenesists.  This  is  a  subject  which  I  propose  to 
discuss  more  fully  in  the  next  chapter.  Mr  Trotter  in 
his  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace  and  War,  seems  to 
consider  that  religion  is  founded  on  the  herd-instinct. 
The  theory  of  Professor  G.  Elliot  Smith  and  Mr  AY.  J. 
Perry,  that  the  first  impulse  towards  certain  early  reli¬ 
gions  was  the  effort  to  find  givers  of  life  which  should 
preserve  the  individual’s  existence,  would  make  such 
religions  a  growth  from  the  instinct  of  self-preservation. 

This  is  an  aspect  of  the  problems  connected  with 
religion  which  has  only  recently  been  brought  to  the 
front  by  the  modern  psychological  study  of  instinct.  A 
writer  would  lay  himself  open  to  a  well-deserved  charge 
of  presumption  if  he  claimed  to  give  a  final  solution  of 
the  problems  raised.  All  that  he  can  hope  to  do  is  to 
suggest  the  lines  along  which  these  solutions  may  be 
sought,  and  to  point  out  the  falsity  of  a  few  of  the 
alluringly  simple  solutions  which  have  little  to  recom¬ 
mend  them  except  their  simplicity. 

If  we  have  admitted  the  multiplicity  of  the  conscious 
roots  of  religious  belief,  we  should  be  prepared  to  dis¬ 
trust  these  too  simple  solutions  which  assert  that  reli¬ 
gion  is  entirely  the  product  of  one  specified  instinct,  and 
to  expect  rather  to  find  that  it  is  a  complex  growth  from 
a  variety  of  instincts.  This  I  believe  to  be  the  case. 
The  satisfaction  which  religion  gives  to,  let  us  say,  the 
herd-instinct  is  not,  indeed,  the  same  as  that  given  by 
association  with  our  fellow-men.  It  is  a  sublimation  of 
the  instinct.  The  energy  of  the  instinct  is  used  in  a  new 


126 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


kind  of  activity.  But  the  instinctive  basis  of  a  religious 
activity  often  gives  its  own  colouring  to  that  activity. 
Examples  of  this  will  be  discussed  later. 

The  instincts  of  self-preservation  seem  clearly  to  be 
connected  with  what  we  have  called  the  Providence 
element  in  religion — that  element  which  looks  to  God  as 
a  provider  for  our  immediate  needs — and  with  a  part  of 
the  demand  for  immortality.  It  is  also  connected  with 
the  self-interested  tendencies  which  come  into  conflict 
wTith  the  requirements  of  the  religious  society.  The  sex- 
instinct  is  similarly  connected  with  the  demand  for  a 
worthy  object  of  love  and  with  the  demand  for  a  giver 
of  love;  the  gregarious  instinct  with  the  high  valuation 
of  the  social  group  as  compared  with  the  individual 
which  results  in  the  sentiment  developed  round  the 
church  and  in  the  religious  individual’s  respect  for 
traditional  authority. 


CHAPTER  X 


THE  SEX-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION 

The  subject  of  the  present  chapter — the  relation  be¬ 
tween  religion  and  the  instinct  of  sex — is  a  question 
which  has  been  forced  to  the  front  by  recent  tendencies 
in  psychology.  The  hesitation  which  may  be  felt  at  any 
attempt  to  handle  the  scientific  treatment  of  the  psy¬ 
chology  of  religion  must  be  felt  wdth  double  force  in 
attempting  to  deal  with  a  problem  so  delicate  and  so 
difficult  as  this.  My  excuse  for  not  evading  the  subject 
altogether  must  be  the  same  as  the  reason  given  in  the 
first  chapter  for  refusing  to  abandon  the  attempt  to 
consider  religion  from  the  point  of  view  of  scientific 
psychology — that  we  were  raising  no  new  problems  but 
discussing  problems  already  raised  by  a  large  number  of 
people.  It  must  surely  be  better  for  the  welfare  of 
religious  thought  that  these  questions  should  be  dis¬ 
cussed  not  only  by  those  wrho  are  frankly  enemies  of 
religion,  but  that  they  should  also  be  investigated  by 
those  who  are  sympathetic  to  it. 

Our  typical  statement  of  the  tenets  of  the  eroto- 
genesists  may  be  taken  from  the  contributions  to  the 
American  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology,  by  Mr 
Theodore  Schroeder.  His  theory  can  be  summed  up  in 
two  statements.  First,  that  all  religion  is  a  misinterpre¬ 
tation  of  sex  feeling.  Secondly,  that  religion  is  there¬ 
fore  completely  discredited.  Both  of  these  statements 
seem  to  be  open  to  question. 

127 


128  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

His  own  formulation  of  the  first  point  is  as  follows: 

all  religion  in  its  beginning  is  a  mere  misinterpretation 
of  sex-ecstasy,  and  the  religion  of  to-day  is,  only  the, 
essentially  unchanged,  evolutionary  product,  of 
psycho-sexual  perversion.  .  .  .  Thus  literally  may  we 
say  “God  is  love’' — sex-love,  sometimes  in  disguise  and 
indistinctly  recognised  as  such,  by  the  lover  whose  love¬ 
sick  longings  even  now  create  a  god  to  take  the  place  of 
the  undiscovered  and  much-craved  human  lover.1 

I  do  not  propose  here  to  deal  with  this  position.  I 
have  already  tried  to  show  in  print  its  shallowness  and 
weakness,  and  the  absurdities  of  a  great  part  of  Mr 
Schroeder’s  defence.2  There  is  one  point  which  perhaps 
demands  notice  at  this  stage.  It  will  be  found  that  at 
the  outset  the  erotogenesists  load  their  dice  by  defining 
religion  so  as  to  inolude  only  what  we  have  called  the 
affective  element.  A  supporter  of  Mr  Schroeder  ex¬ 
plains  what  he  means  by  religion,  as  follows: 

He  [Mr  Schroeder]  finds  that  religion  is  a  subjective 
experience,  ecstatic  in  its  nature,  ascribed  to  the  so- 
called  “transcendental'’  and  interpreted  as  certifying 
to  the  inerrancy  of  some  doctrine  or  ceremonial  which 
through  human  means  serves  personal  ends,  the  latter 
also  supposed  to  be  wholly  or  in  part  of  a  superphysical 
order.3 

This  limiting  of  religion  to  a  subjective  experience  is  a 
totally  unwarranted  simplification  of  the  problem. 

I  do  not  deny  (indeed  I  emphasise)  the  importance  of 
the  facts  which  Mr  Schroeder  brings  forward.  I  even 

1  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology,  vol.  vr. 

2  Article,  “Religion  and  the  Sex-Instinct,”  Psyche.  Oct.  1921. 

3  “The  Problems  and  Present  Status  of  Religious  Psychology,” 
Van  Teslaar,  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology.  Nov.  1914. 


THE  SEX-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  129 


suggest  that  they  are  so  important  that  no  theory  of  the 
psychology  of  religion  deserves  any  consideration  unless 
it  takes  them  into  account.  But  the  essential  require¬ 
ment  of  this  theory  is  that  it  should  be  shown  that  reli¬ 
gion  contains  nothing  but  elements  of  this  kind,  and 
this  is  exactly  what  Mr  Schroeder  makes  no  attempt  at 
all  to  prove. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  discussion  of  the  relationship 
between  the  sex-instinct  and  religion,  it  will  be  well  to 
try  to  rid  our  minds  of  a  prejudice  which  tends  to  warp 
any  judgment  on  such  a  question.  This  is  the  feeling 
that  there  is  something  inherently  disgusting  about  the 
sex-instinct  which  makes  the  mere  suggestion  of  a  con¬ 
nection  between  religion  and  sex  revolting.  There  is 
plainly  neither  moral  good  nor  evil  in  the  instincts 
themselves.  Moral  value  lies  in  the  due  subordination 
amongst  themselves  of  the  conflicting  systems  of  in¬ 
stincts  and  in  their  control  by  our  higher  mental  func¬ 
tions.  The  sex-instinct  is  at  the  root  of  all  the  highest 
expressions  of  human  character  wrhich  can  be  called  out 
by  love  at  its  best,  as  well  as  of  the  depravity  which  we 
commonly  call  sexuality.  There  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  feel  willing  to  admit  that  the  herd-instinct  and 
the  parental  instinct  may  play  a  part  in  the  determina¬ 
tion  of  religious  behaviour,  but  feel  horror  at  the  sug¬ 
gestion  that  the  sex-instinct  also  does. 

It  is  important  to  get  rid  of  this  prejudice  because  it 
is  to  it  alone  that  a  certain  class  of  attacks  on  religion 
owe  their  sting.  A  book  was  published  recently  by 
C.  Cohen,  called  Religion  and  Sex ,  which  was  little  more 
than  an  enumeration  of  all  the  connections  the  author 
could  find  between  religion  and  the  sex-instinct.  It  is 
intended  as  an  attack  on  religion.  The  author  is  defend¬ 
ing  no  thesis  like  that  of  the  erotogenesists,  but  is  quite 


130  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

satisfied  that  the  mere  enumeration  of  such  connections 
is  sufficient  to  discredit  religion. 

What  are  we  to  conclude  from  the  failure  of  the  the¬ 
ory  of  erotogenesis?  That  the  religious  sentiment  is  in 
no  way  connected  with  the  instinct  of  sex?  That  would 
fail  to  account  for  the  observed  facts,  which  are  dis¬ 
cussed  later.  If  the  evidence  shows  that  there  is  a 
connection,  it  must  be  our  purpose  to  find  out  what 
that  connection  is,  how  far-reaching  it  is,  and  what  is  its 
significance  for  religion. 

First,  we  may  consider  what  sort  of  evidence  may 
reasonably  be  looked  for  as  an  indication  that  the 
religious  sentiment  is  rooted  in  a  particular  instinct. 
There  are  several  different  kinds  of  evidence  which  are 
relevant.  In  the  first  place,  if  an  instinct  is  not  uni¬ 
formly  in  action  during  the  whole  of  the  life-time  of  the 
individual  but  has  a  period  of  development  and  decay, 
we  should  expect  to  find  that,  so  far  as  it  is  based  on  that 
instinct,  the  religious  sentiment  shows  similar  varia¬ 
tions.  Secondly,  so  far  as  it  is  based  on  an  instinct,  we 
should  expect  to  find  the  religious  sentiment  expressing 
itself  in  language  characteristic  of  the  sentiment  nor¬ 
mally  developed  from  that  instinct.  Thirdly,  we  should 
expect  to  find  religious  practice  particularly  concerned 
with  the  suppression  of  the  normal  behaviour  charac¬ 
teristic  of  that  instinct.  Fourthly,  we  might  expect  to 
find  a  tendency  for  religion  of  a  highly  emotional  but 
ill-controlled  type  to  develop  into  an  uncontrolled 
normal  exercise  of  the  instinct. 

We  find,  in  fact,  that  all  of  these  tests  yield  positive 
results  when  applied  to  religion  and  the  sex-instinct. 
Certain  types  of  religious  excitement  and  certain  phases 
of  religious  development  show  a  correspondence  with 
the  times  of  the  crises  of  the  sex-life.  The  expressions 


THE  SEX-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  131 


of  religious  emotion  (particularly  those  of  the  mystics) 
are  very  generally  in  the  language  of  human  love.  Reli¬ 
gion  has,  on  the  whole,  tended  to  attach  a  great  value  to 
chastity.  Finally,  there  is  a  tendency  for  religious  ex¬ 
citement  of  a  certain  kind  to  pass  into  sexual  license. 
At  the  same  time,  a  closer  examination  of  these  facts 
does  not  lead  us  to  suspect  that  religion  is  merely  a 
development  from  the  sex-instinct.  On  the  contrary, 
the  indications  are  clearly  in  the  opposite  direction. 
We  shall  see  that  this  is  the  case  when  we  examine  each 
of  these  four  classes  of  facts  in  turn. 

First,  we  will  consider  the  connection  between  the 
development  of  religion  in  the  individual  and  of  his  sex- 
instinct.  The  most  striking  example  of  this  connection 
is  to  be  found  in  the  tendency  for  religious  conversions 
to  take  place  (in  those  communities  which  attach  a 
high  value  to  conversion)  some  time  during  the  period 
of  adolescence.  This  was  a  subject  which  was  particu¬ 
larly  studied  by  Starbuck,  and  his  results  are  published 
in  his  Psychology  of  Religion.  He  sums  up  his  conclu¬ 
sions  as  follows: 

Conversion  is  a  distinctly  adolescent  phenomenon. 
It  is  a  singular  fact  also  that  within  this  period  con¬ 
versions  do  not  distribute  themselves  equally  among 
the  years;  in  the  rough,  we  may  say  they  begin  to  occur 
at  seven  or  eight  years  and  increase  in  number  gradu¬ 
ally,  to  ten  or  eleven,  and  then  rapidly  to  sixteen; 
rapidly  decline  to  twenty,  and  gradually  fall  away  after 
that,  and  become  rare  after  thirty.  .  .  .  The  event 
comes  earlier  in  general  among  the  females  than  among 
males,  most  frequently  at  thirteen  and  sixteen.  Among 
males  it  occurs  most  often  at  seventeen  and  imme¬ 
diately  before  and  after  that  year.  .  .  .  Conversion 
and  puberty  tend  to  supplement  each  other  in  time 


132  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


rather  than  to  coincide;  but  they  may,  nevertheless,  be 
mutually  conditioned. 

Similar  evidence  is  given  by  a  large  number  of  revival 
preachers,  and  in  Dr  Hall’s  Adolescence.  The  main 
differences  in  the  new  religion  of  the  adolescent  convert 
are  its  increased  emotional  content,  and  the  fact  that  it 
is  much  more  a  product  of  his  own  experience  and  much 
less  of  what  he  has  been  taught.  In  the  language  of  the 
first  chapter,  the  traditional  element  in  his  religion  has 
grown  less  and  the  experiential  element  greater.  Star- 
buck  has  also  shown  that  a  similar  change  takes  place  at 
the  same  age  even  in  those  cases  of  religious  develop¬ 
ment,  which  are  not  accompanied  by  the  sharp  change 
which  we  call  conversion.  This  seems  to  point  to  the 
fact  that  the  sex-instinct  contributes  something  to  the 
experiential  element  in  religion.  But  the  evidence  is 
very  much  against  its  contributing  everything.  Emo¬ 
tional  religion  is  not  entirely  absent  in  childhood.  Some¬ 
times,  though  rarely,  the  intense  emotional  experiences 
of  mysticism  have  occurred  before  adolescence.  And 
there  is  little  evidence  of  a  corresponding  decay  of  emo¬ 
tional  religion  in  old  age  when  the  sex-life  is  past. 

We  now  turn  to  the  second  point,  the  tendency  of  reli¬ 
gious  emotion  to  express  itself  in  the  language  of  human 
love.  This  is  common  amongst  the  mystics.  Thus 
St  John  of  the  Cross,  in  The  Dark  Night  of  the  Soul, 
describes  the  mystic  union  in  the  following  stanzas : 

On  my  flowery  bosom,  Kept  whole  for  Him  alone, 
There  He  reposed  and  slept ;  and  I  cherished  Him,  and 
the  waving  of  the  cedars  fanned  Him. 

As  His  hair  floated  in  the  breeze,  That  from  the 
turret  blew,  He  struck  me  on  the  neck,  With  His  gentle 
hand.  And  all  sensation  left  me. 


THE  SEX-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  133 


I  continued  in  oblivion  lost,  My  head  was  resting  on 
my  love;  Lost  to  all  things  and  myself,  And,  amid  the 
lilies  forgotten,  Threw  all  my  cares  away. 

This  is  characteristically  the  language  of  human  love. 
Such  language  is  also  found  in  popular  devotions,  but 
much  more  rarely  than  amongst  the  mystics.  Some 
hymns  show  this  tendency.  Yet  even  amongst  the  mys¬ 
tics  the  use  of  language  of  this  kind  is  not  so  universal  as 
would  be  required  by  a  theory  which  asserts  the  identity 
of  human  love  and  religion.  When  the  mystic  discovers 
the  insufficiency  of  ordinary  language  to  describe  his 
experiences,  he  uses  symbolism  drawn  from  all  parts  of 
life.  He  speaks  of  a  divine  lover,  of  betrothals  and  of  a 
spiritual  marriage;  but  he  also  uses  the  symbolism  of 
listening  to  music  and  of  tasting  or  smelling. 

Thirdly,  there  is  the  high  value  placed  by  religion  on 
chastity;  in  other  words,  on  the  total  suppression  of  the 
sex-instinct.  This  again  is  most  marked  in  mysticism. 
There  has  certainly  been  a  tendency  in  historical  Chris¬ 
tianity  to  regard  marriage  rather  as  a  concession  to 
human  weakness  than  as  anything  good  in  itself.  It  is 
easy  to  exaggerate  this  tendency,  as  Feuerbach  does 
when  he  says :  “Marriage  in  itself  is,  in  the  sense  of  per¬ 
fected  Christianity,  a  sin,  or  rather  a  weakness,  which  is 
permitted  or  forgiven”  only  on  condition  that  it  is 
monogamous.  But  amongst  the  mystics  a  very  high 
valuation  of  chastity  is  clearly  seen  to  exist.  Absolute 
chastity,  the  complete  denial  of  the  consolations  of 
human  love,  seems  to  the  mystic  to  have  been  the  neces¬ 
sary  condition  for  his  enjoyment  of  the  divine.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  must  notice  that  in  this  respect  the 
sex-instinct  does  not  stand  alone.  The  suppression  of 
other  instincts  is  regarded  by  the  mystics  as  of  equally 


131 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


high  religious  value.  Meekness,  fasting  and  solitude, 
as  well  as  chastity,  are  necessary  methods  of  approach 
to  the  highest  religious  life.  Meekness  is  a  name  for  the 
suppression  of  the  self-assertive  impulses  which  belong 
to  the  instincts  of  self-preservation ;  fasting  is  the  sup¬ 
pression  of  the  instinct  of  nutrition;  and  solitude  is  a 
method  of  suppressing  the  gregarious  instinct.  The 
freeing  of  the  self  from  all  desire,  not  merely  from 
sexual  desire,  is  required  from  the  mystic. 

Fourthly,  we  must  glance  at  the  tendency  of  religion 
of  a  certain  kind  to  develop  into  sexual  license.  If  the 
development  of  the  religious  sentiment  takes  place  in 
part  by  the  repression  of  the  normal  mode  of  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  sex-instinct,  cases  in  which  this  normal 
mode  breaks  out  in  a  violent  form  need  not  surprise  us. 
Fortunately  such  cases  are  rare.  They  are  to  be  found 
in  the  sects  which  have  combined  religion  with  the  prac¬ 
tice  of  promiscuous  sexual  intercourse.  These  have 
been  known  in  all  ages  from  some  of  the  bodies  which 
sprang  out  of  the  early  Christianity  to  modern  ones 
which  have  risen  in  Russia  and  the  United  States. 
Many  of  these  started  with  an  exaggerated  over-valua¬ 
tion  of  chastity,  a  fact  which  lends  support  to  the  expla¬ 
nation  here  suggested.  A  fuller  account  of  them  will  be 
found  in  Mr  Cohen’s  Religion  and  Sex. 

To  sum  up  the  conclusions  of  this  investigation,  the 
evidence  seems  clearly  to  point  to  the  sex-instinct  as 
part  of  the  instinctive  foundation  of  religion.  It  lends 
no  support  to  the  view  that  this  is  the  whole  of  religion. 
This  instinct  seems  particularly  to  be  operative  in  the 
production  of  the  peculiarly  emotional  religion  of  the 
adolescent,  and  in  mystical  religion.  Essentially  this  is 
an  example  of  sublimation.  It  is  not  merely  a  suppres¬ 
sion  of  an  instinct  followed  by  the  utilisation  of  its 


THE  SEX-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  135 


energy  for  the  ends  of  religion.  It  is  rather  that  the 
sentiment  of  religion  is  built  in  part  on  the  innate 
mental  disposition  called  the  sex-instinct,  just  as  is  the 
sentiment  of  human  love. 

I  dissent  altogether  from  the  view  that  this  relation¬ 
ship  is  one  which  degrades  religion.  It  is  implicitly 
recognised  by  many  of  the  mystics,  to  whom  the  love 
of  God  has  seemed  to  be  the  end  of  those  desires  which 
they  thought  could  find  only  imperfect  satisfaction  in 
human  love.  Thus,  Coventry  Patmore  speaks  of  “that 
human  love  which  is  the  precursor  and  explanation  of 
and  initiation  into  the  divine.”  1  Dr  G.  Stanley  Hall 
means  it  as  no  reproach  to  religion  when  he  says :  “True 
piety  is  earthly  love  transcendentalised,  and  the  saint 
is  the  lover  purified,  refined,  and  perfected.”  2 

A  last  example  of  the  recognition  by  a  religious  person 
of  the  relation  between  human  and  divine  love  may  be 
taken  from  the  pages  of  a  Mohammedan  poet.  In  his 
Yusuf  u  Zuleykha,  Jami  praises  human  love  because  it 
leads  the  soul  to  the  divine  love.  He  considers  that  the 
experience  of  human  love  must  necessarily  precede  the 
knowledge  of  divine  love;  but  he  gives  the  warning 
(typical  of  all  religion  with  a  strong  mystical  trend) 
that  the  soul  must  not  rest  in  human  love,  but  must 
value  it  only  because  of  the  possibility  of  its  sublimation 
to  the  religious  end. 

Though  in  this  world  a  hundred  tasks  thou  tryest, 
JTis  love  alone  which  from  thyself  will  save  thee. 
Even  from  earthly  love  thy  face  avert  not, 

Since  to  the  Real  it  may  serve  to  raise  thee. 

1  The  Rod ,  The  Root  and  the  Flower ,  by  Coventry  Patmore, 
Magna  Moralia,  xux. 

2  The  Psychology  of  Adolescence,  by  Professor  G.  Stanley  Hall, 
n.  p.  294. 


136  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

Ere  A,  B,  C  are  rightly  apprehended, 

How  canst  thou  con  the  pages  of  thy  Kur’an? 

A  sage  (so  heard  I),  unto  whom  a  student 
Came  craving  counsel  on  the  path  before  him, 

Said,  “If  thy  steps  be  strangers  to  love’s  pathways, 
Depart,  learn  love,  and  then  return  before  me! 

For,  should’st  thou  fear  to  drink  wine  from  Form’s 
flagon, 

Thou  canst  not  drain  the  draught  of  the  Ideal. 

But  yet  beware!  Be  not  by  Form  belated; 

Strive  rather  with  all  speed  the  bridge  to  traverse. 

If  to  the  bourn  thou  fain  would’st  bear  thy  baggage 
L^pon  the  bridge  let  not  thy  footsteps  linger.”  1 

Nothing  has  so  far  been  said  about  the  contribution 
of  the  psychoanalysts  to  this  question.  The  theory  of 
erotogenesis  was  not  a  growth  from  psychoanalysis. 
The  best  known  contribution  from  this  school  has  been 
Dr  C.  G.  Jung’s  Psychology  of  the  Unconscious.  This 
is  a  work  which  deals  mostly  with  the  legends  of  early 
religions  and  makes  only  occasional  and  not  very  satis¬ 
factory  mention  of  the  higher  religions.  Its  essential 
thesis  is  that  religion  is  largely  an  expression  of  the 
tendency  to  regression  to  the  attitude  of  infantile  de¬ 
pendence  on  the  parent,  which  is  characteristic  of  an 
unsatisfactory  development  of  the  individual’s  love- 
life.  That  this  exists  as  an  element  in  religion  need  not 
be  doubted,  but  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  for  sup¬ 
posing  that  it  is  the  whole  of  religion.  The  infantile 
attitude  comes  out  clearly  in  certain  hymns,  and  in  the 
writings  of  some  of  the  mystics.  As  illustrations,  w^e 
may  take  the  attitude  of  dependence  expressed  in  such 
hymns  as  the  ones  beginning  “Safe  in  the  arms  of 

translated  by  Professor  E.  G.  Browne  in  A  Year  amongst  the 
Persians,  p.  128. 


THE  SEX-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  137 


Jesus/’  and  “I  rest  my  soul  on  Jesus” ;  and  in  the  follow¬ 
ing  passage  from  Lady  Julian: 

Fair  and  sweet  is  our  Heavenly  Mother  in  the  sight  of 
our  souls;  precious  and  lovely  are  the  Gracious  Chil¬ 
dren  in  the  sight  of  our  Heavenly  Mother,  .  .  .  And  I 
understood  none  higher  stature  in  this  life  than  Child¬ 
hood,  in  feebleness  and  failing  of  might  and  wit,  unto 
the  time  that  our  Gracious  Mother  hath  brought  us 
up  to  our  Father’s  Bliss.1 

It  seems  probable  that  the  method  of  psychoanalysis 
will  throw  a  great  deal  of  light  on  the  question  both  of 
the  mental  roots  of  the  belief  in  God,  and  on  the  part 
played  by  religion  in  the  stabilising  of  unbalanced  per¬ 
sonalities,  and  in  the  building  up  of  character.  What  is 
needed  is  a  series  of  psychoanalyses  of  religious  persons 
directed  towards  the  elucidation  of  this  problem.2  I  find 
it  difficult  to  believe  that  results  of  any  value  can  ever 
be  obtained  by  psychoanalytic  writing  of  the  kind  rep¬ 
resented  by  an  article  in  the  International  Journal  of 
Psychoanalysis  for  March,  1921,  which  claims  to  be  a 
psychoanalytic  study  of  the  Christian  Creed.  The 
author  takes  phrases  of  the  creed  and  states  their  psy¬ 
choanalytic  meaning  in  the  usual  Freudian  language. 
There  is  no  indication  that  these  meanings  are  based  on 
any  actual  observations  in  analysis.  The  idea  of  God 
the  Father  is  stated  to  be  a  father  substitute  adopted  by 
the  adolescent  with  a  dominant  CEdipus  complex,  who 
finds  the  actual  father  inadequate.  “The  ultimate 
causes  of  the  Father  symbol  are  the  repressed  parental 
complexes  that  are  satisfied  by  this  belief.”  The  predi- 

1  Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  by  the  Lady  Julian,  chap.  Lxm. 

2  An  account  of  pioneer  work  in  this  investigation  is  to  be  found 
in  The  Psychoanalytic  Method,  by  Dr  Oskar  Pfister.  (Eng.  trans., 
London,  1915.) 


138  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


cate  of  Almighty  results  from  the  effort  of  the  uncon¬ 
scious  to  recover  the  omnipotence  of  the  babe  in  the 
womb.  “The  Virgin  Mary,”  we  are  told,  “is  an  especially 
attractive  object  of  worship  because  she  satisfies  an  un¬ 
conscious  longing  of  the  infant  boy  to  supplant  the 
father  or  to  think  him  away.”  This  path  of  easy  dogma¬ 
tism  and  unsupported  speculation  is,  of  course,  the  ne¬ 
gation  of  scientific  method,  and  it  is  surprising  to  find  it 
as  an  offshoot  of  a  system  which  claims  to  be  the  result 
of  the  application  of  a  rigid  determinism  to  psychology. 

While  it  seems  likely  that  scientific  psychoanalytic 
investigation  will  throw  light  on  many  of  the  problems 
of  the  origin  and  growth  of  religious  ideas,  it  seems  im¬ 
probable  that  its  discoveries  will  be  of  such  a  fundamen¬ 
tal  character  as  many  of  its  supporters  are  at  present  in¬ 
clined  to  believe.  The  assumption  underlying  the  con¬ 
clusions  of  the  psychoanalysts  is  that  the  fact  which  is 
reached  last  in  a  chain  of  free  associations  1  from  a  given 
idea  is  the  real  cause  of  that  idea.  It  has  been  pointed 
out  by  Dr  Rivers  2  that  this  is  not  an  assumption  which 
we  can  admit  without  question.  It  is  possible  that  the 
infantile  sexuality  insisted  on  by  the  Freudians  is  in 
some  real  sense  an  initial  factor  in  religion  as  in  all  other 
human  activities;  but  that  this  is  not  a  fact  of  such 
importance  that  it  dwarfs  all  the  other  factors  in  the 
building  up  of  religion,  and  makes  the  question  of  the 
truth  of  its  objects  a  trivial  one.  It  is  possible  that  the 
Freudians  who  insist  that  it  is  a  factor  of  such  impor¬ 
tance  are  in  the  position  of  botanists  who,  having  dug 
round  the  roots  of  an  oak  tree,  have  discovered  the 

1  Free  association  is  the  method  adopted  in  psychoanalysis  when 
the  patient  is  asked  to  give  all  the  thoughts  which  come  into  his 
mind,  starting  from  a  given  situation  or  incident,  without  attempting 
in  any  way  to  control  the  course  of  his  chain  of  thoughts. 

2  In  a  course  of  lectures  not  yet  published. 


THE  SEX-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  139 


remains  of  the  acorn  from  which  it  grew,  and  insist  that 
in  this  and  this  alone  lies  all  the  significance  of  the  oak  ; 
and  that  the  other  scientists  who  spend  their  lives  in 
the  investigation  of  the  structure  of  the  tree  itself,  the 
artists  who  rejoice  in  its  beauty,  and  the  carpenters  who 
use  its  wood,  are  all  alike  living  in  a  fool’s  paradise, 
because  they  have  not  realised  that  the  oak  is  a  decayed 
acorn  and  nothing  more. 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION 

In  the  ninth  chapter  we  discussed  the  gregarious  or 
herd-instinct,  which  determines  the  behaviour  and  feel¬ 
ings  of  individuals  of  a  gregarious  species  of  animals  in 
their  relations  with  other  individuals  of  the  same  spe¬ 
cies.  If  we  admit  that  man  is  a  gregarious  animal,  we 
are  led  to  look  to  the  herd-instinct  as  the  biological  ex¬ 
planation  of  his  behaviour  in  his  social  organisations  in 
the  widest  sense — when  he  forms  a  society,  or  assembles 
in  a  crowd,  or  when  he  behaves  as  a  well-regulated  mem¬ 
ber  of  a  previously  existing  society.  We  regard  herd- 
suggestion  as  the  mental  concomitant  of  the  herd- 
instinct.  The  general  obedience  of  the  individual  to  the 
will  of  his  society  in  courses  of  action,  his  sympathetic 
response  to  the  emotions  of  his  society,  and  his  defer¬ 
ence  to  its  opinions,  are  all  results  of  the  operation  of 
herd-suggestion.  They  are  necessary  means  of  securing 
conformity  in  action  of  all  individuals  of  the  same  group 
so  that  the  ends  of  the  herd-instinct  may  be  attained. 

A  well-known  and  imaginative  work  of  popular 
science  1  discusses  the  influence  of  the  herd-instinct  on 
human  behaviour.  Apparently  the  author  considers 
that  the  herd-instinct  is  the  principal  root  of  religious 
belief,  for  he  says: 

This  intimate  dependence  on  the  herd  is  traceable 
not  merely  in  matters  physical  and  intellectual,  but 

1  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace  and  War,  by  Mr  W.  Trotter. 
(London,  1916.) 


140 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  141 


also  betrays  itself  in  the  deepest  recesses  of  person¬ 
ality  as  a  sense  of  incompleteness  which  compels  the 
individual  to  reach  out  towards  some  larger  existence 
than  his  own,  some  encompassing  being  in  whom  his 
perplexities  may  find  a  solution  and  his  longings  peace. 
Physical  loneliness  and  intellectual  isolation  are 
effectually  solaced  by  the  nearness  and  agreement  of 
the  herd.  The  deeper  personal  necessities  cannot  be 
met — at  any  rate,  in  such  society  as  has  been  so  far 
evolved — by  so  superficial  a  union.  .  .  .  Religious 
feeling  is  therefore  a  character  inherent  in  the  very 
structure  of  the  human  mind,  and  is  the  expression 
of  a  need  which  must  be  recognised  by  the  biologist 
as  neither  superficial  nor  transitory.1 

We  need  not  suppose  that  the  unsatisfied  longings  of 
the  herd-instinct  make  up  the  whole  of  the  biological 
foundation  of  religious  feeling  (or,  indeed,  the  principal 
part  of  it)  in  order  to  appreciate  the  importance  of  the 
point  of  view  of  this  paragraph.  Perhaps  the  essential 
difference  between  the  part  played  by  the  herd-instinct 
and  by  the  sex-instinct  in  the  production  of  religious 
emotion,  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  former  is  not  subject  to 
such  necessary  repression  under  the  conditions  of  mod¬ 
ern  life  as  is  the  latter.  A  psychoanalytic  investigation 
of  the  mental  roots  of  the  religion  of  Robinson  Crusoe 
might  have  shown  that  the  unsatisfied  longings  of  the 
herd-instinct  resulting  from  his  complete  loneliness 
played  a  very  considerable  part  in  its  formation.  This, 
however,  is  mere  speculation;  such  conditions  are  too 
rare  for  investigation.  What  is  certain  is  that  the  sup¬ 
pression  of  the  normal  mode  of  satisfaction  of  the  herd- 
instinct  is  a  preliminary  condition  of  the  more  intensive 


1  Op.  cit.  p.  113. 


142 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


religious  life.  Solitude  is  sought  in  the  monastic  cell; 
the  esteem  of  one’s  fellow-men  is  despised. 

To  go  abroad  but  now  and  then,  To  shun  publicity, 
— Ay,  even  not  to  wish  to  see  the  face  of  man,  All 
this  is  to  be  praised  in  one  who  takes  the  vows.  .  .  . 
Go  in  and  bar  your  door  And  call  upon  your  loved 
one,  “ Jesus  come  to  me.”  Stay  in  your  cell  wTith  Him; 
Elsewhere  you  will  not  find  such  rest.1 

This  renunciation  of  the  pleasures  of  human  society 
and  of  society’s  approval  is  seen  in  an  extreme  form  in 
the  lives  of  the  Egyptian  Fathers,  who  would  behave 
grotesquely  in  public  lest  they  should  earn  a  reputation 
for  being  holy  men  and  so  end  by  recovering  the  esteem 
which  they  began  by  renouncing. 

One  of  the  results  of  the  possession  by  man  of  the 
instincts  of  a  gregarious  animal  is  the  fact  that  he  tends 
to  form  more  or  less  permanent  groups,  and  that  in  such 
groups  his  behaviour  and  his  emotional  reactions  are 
entirely  different  from  those  of  his  solitary  life.  This 
influence  of  his  social  environment  on  the  mind  of  an 
individual  man  makes  it  possible  for  the  purpose  of 
study  to  consider  the  group  as  a  unit.  It  is  not  neces¬ 
sary  to  postulate  any  collective  consciousness  for  a  social 
group,  and  any  such  assumption  is  unnecessary  and  un¬ 
scientific.  The  term  the  group  mind  has  been  used  by 
Dr  McDougall 2  in  a  way  which  does  not  assume  the 
existence  of  any  hypothetical  group  consciousness,  and 
in  McDougall’s  sense  it  may  be  found  to  be  a  useful  one 
for  social  psychology.  There  are  two  directions  from 
which  the  problems  of  religion  have  been  approached 
by  writers  who  make  fundamental  to  their  thought,  the 

1  The  Imitation  of  Christ,  by  St  Thomas  a  Kempis. 

2  The  Group  Mind.  (London,  1920.)  Introduction. 


\ 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  143 


unity  of  the  social  group.  The  first  of  these  is  that  of  the 
French  sociologists,  who  collaborate  in  the  production 
of  VAnnee  Sociologique,  the  second  is  that  of  the  writers 
on  the  somewhat  nebulous  crowd  psychology,  which 
has  been  made  popular  by  Le  Bon. 

We  will  consider  first  the  point  of  view  of  sociology. 
This  differs  from  the  point  of  view  of  psychology  in  the 
fact  that  in  sociology,  groups  of  human  beings  and  not 
individuals  are  the  units  whose  laws  we  endeavour  to 
trace  out.  We  may  (if  we  wish)  speak  of  a  group  mind, 
a  general  will  and  collective  ideas,  thus  taking  over  into 
sociology  the  words  of  psychology  with  their  meanings 
changed.  We  may  disagree  about  the  desirability  of 
such  a  taking  over  of  terms,  but  the  question  is  not  one 
of  the  first  importance.  What  is  important  is  that  we 
should  recognise  clearly  that  their  meaning  has  been 
changed,  that  if  we  choose  to  talk  about  a  group  mind 
we  have  no  right  to  assume  that  there  is  in  group 
activity  anything  of  the  same  nature  as  the  individual 
consciousness  which  accompanies  the  working  of  the 
mind  of  psychology. 

The  relationship  between  psychology  and  sociology 
appears  to  be  the  same  as  that  between  molecular 
physics  and  mechanics.  In  molecular  physics,  single 
molecules  are  considered  as  separate  things  and  the  laws 
of  their  interaction  are  the  objects  of  study.  In  me¬ 
chanics,  masses  of  matter  are  considered  without  any 
reference  to  the  molecules  of  which  they  are  composed 
— malleability,  for  example,  is  treated  as  a  property  of 
matter  in  mass  without  any  consideration  of  its  ulti¬ 
mate  dependence  on  the  mutual  attractions  of  the  con¬ 
stituent  molecules.  In  the  same  way,  it  is  found  in 
sociology  that  groups  of  men  interact  with  sufficient  uni¬ 
formity  for  it  to  be  possible  to  develop  laws  of  their  in- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


141 

teraction  without  any  reference  to  the  fact  that  these 
are  ultimately  determined  by  the  passions  and  struggles 
of  individual  men.  The  danger  which  threatens  the  sci¬ 
ence  of  sociology  is  that  it  should  forget  this  ultimate 
dependence  of  its  data  on  the  facts  of  individual  psy¬ 
chology.  It  is  ultimately  on  the  laws  of  the  interaction 
of  individuals  (on  the  operation  of  the  herd-instinct  in 
suggestion,  etc.,  on  the  antagonistic  action  of  the  in¬ 
stinct  of  self-preservation,  and  so  on)  that  the  behaviour 
of  groups  of  men  is  dependent.  It  may  be  found  more 
convenient  to  express  facts  connected  with  societies  in 
terms  of  the  conceptions  of  sociology,  but  it  must  be  re¬ 
membered  that  there  is  no  social  fact  which  is  not 
(theoretically  at  least)  expressible  in  terms  of  indi¬ 
vidual  psychology. 

This  method  of  treating  religion  has  been  adopted  by 
Durkheim  and  his  collaborators  in  VAnnee  Sociologique. 
The  characteristics  of  their  treatment  and  its  limitations 
are  alike  determined  by  the  fact  that  they  look  for 
religion  amongst  “les  faits  sociaux.”  1  Their  refusal  to 
admit  the  legitimacy  of  any  other  method  of  approach 
than  the  sociological  is  absolute,  as  may  be  seen  by  the 
following  extract  from  an  article  by  M.  Durkheim,  en¬ 
titled  “De  la  Definition  des  Phenomenes  Religieux”: 

.  .  .  ce  n’est  pas  dans  la  nature  humaine  en  general 
qu’il  faut  aller  chercher  la  cause  determinate  des 
phenomes  religieux;  c’est  dans  la  nature  des 
societes  auxquelles  ils  se  rapportent,  et  s’ils  ont  evolue 
au  cours  de  Phistoire,  c’est  que  l’organisation  sociale 
elle-meme  s’est  transformee.  Du  coup,  les  theories 
traditionnelles  qui  croirent  decouvrir  la  source  de  la 
religiosite  dans  des  sentiments  prives,  comme  la  crainte 

1  L’Annee  Sociologique ,  n.  p.  2. 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  115 


reverentielle  qu’inspiraient  a  chacun  de  nous  soit  le 
jeu  des  grandes  forces  cosmiques  soit  le  spectacle  de 
certains  phenomenes  naturels  comme  la  mort,  doivent 
nous  devenir  plus  que  suspectes.  On  peut  des  mainte- 
nant  prejuger  avec  quelque  assurance  que  les 
recherches  doivent  etre  conduites  dans  un  tout  autre 
esprit.  Le  probleme  se  pose  en  termes  sociologiques. 
Les  forces  devant  lesquelles  s’incline  le  croyant  ne  sent 
pas  des  simples  energies  physiques,  telles  qu’elles  sont 
donnees  au  sens  et  a  himagination ;  ce  sont  des  forces 
sociales.  Elies  sont  le  produit  direct  de  sentiments 
collect  if  s  qui  ont  ete  amenes  a  prendre  un  revetement 
materiel.1 

The  introduction  of  a  single  word  would  make  this 
passage  unobjectionable.  If  M.  Durkheim  were  content 
to  say  that  theories  which  try  to  account  for  religion 
merely  by  appealing  to  individual  feelings  such  as  rev¬ 
erential  fear  must  be  more  than  suspect,  most  people 
would  be  willing  to  agree  with  him.  But  he  goes  further 
than  this  and  would  have  us  believe  that  the  forces 
which  produce  religion  are  merely  social,  an  opinion 
which  ignores  the  complexities  of  the  question  as  com¬ 
pletely  as  the  one  he  is  engaged  in  refuting. 

The  practical  drawbacks  of  the  limitations  of  this 
method  of  treatment  may  be  illustrated  by  a  review  of 
The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  by  M.  Mauss: 

Deja  M.  J.  nous  concede  que  la  plus  grande  partie  de 
khumanite  n’a  pas  eu  de  ces  veritables  experiences  reli- 
gieuses,  et  que  la  majorite  des  fideles  de  toutes  les 
religions  vivent  sur  le  fonds  traditionnel.  ...  La  vie 
religieuse  du  commun  des  mortels  n’est  que  de  “seconde 
main.”  2 

1  L’Annee  Sociologique,  n.  p.  24. 

2  Ibid.  vn.  p.  205. 


146  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


This  amounts  to  the  statement  that  the  only  element 
which  plays  a  part  in  the  building  up  of  the  normal 
religious  belief  is  what  wTe  have  described  as  the  tradi¬ 
tional  element.  This  is  a  pure  assumption  which  has  no 
better  support  in  fact  than  its  necessity  in  order  to 
render  possible  the  treatment  of  religion  as  only  “un 
fait  social.”  All  the  evidence  which  has  already  been 
brought  forward  to  show  the  dependence  of  normal  (and 
not  only  mystical)  religion  on  experience  of  various 
kinds,  and  the  proved  weakness  of  religion  in  which  the 
traditional  element  alone  is  developed,  refute  this  re¬ 
duction  of  religion  solely  to  this  one  element.  A  circum¬ 
stance  which  leads  us  to  distrust  any  generalisation 
which  starts  by  the  assertion  that  religion  is  merely  the 
product  of  one  of  the  constituent  elements  we  supposed 
it  to  have  been  made  up  of,  is  the  fact  that  other  schools 
of  investigators  tell  us  with  equal  conviction  that  re¬ 
ligion  is  merely  the  result  of  one  of  the  other  elements. 
For  example,  we  may  compare  the  assertion  of  the 
French  sociologists  that  religion  is  merely  the  product 
of  social  forces  and  their  complete  denial  of  the  theories 
which  trace  it  to  individual  subjective  experiences,  with 
the  theory  of  the  erotogenesists  who  say  that  it  is  alto¬ 
gether  the  product  of  the  misinterpretation  of  an 
individual  subjective  experience. 

The  French  sociologists  consider  that  the  ideas  of 
religion  belong  to  the  class  of  -collective  ideas,  products 
of  pre-logical  group  thinking.  This  pre-logical  or 
mystical  thinking  is  supposed  by  them  to  have  been  the 
normal  mental  process  of  primitive  man,  and  to  have 
continued  to  develop  side  by  side  with  the  logical  think¬ 
ing  which  acknowledges  the  supremacy  of  the  law  of 
contradiction.  While  logical  processes  of  thinking  have, 
on  the  whole,  ousted  the  rival  method,  M.  Levy  Bruhl 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  147 


states  that  it  continues  to  lurk  in  the  congenial  gloom 
of  the  sanctuary  and  the  law  court.  A  collective  repre¬ 
sentation  is  what  is  imagined  by  many  members  of  a 
group,  each  under  the  influence  of  the  rest;  it  represents 
things  to  be,  not  as  they  are,  but  as  for  certain  social 
purposes  one  would  wish  them  to  be. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  some  of  the  proc¬ 
esses  of  religious  thinking  show  an  alogical  and  infantile 
character.  This  infantile  character  is  shown  by  the  de¬ 
pendence  on  symbolism  and  the  difficulty  of  translating 
religious  ideas  into  the  exact  language  of  directed  think¬ 
ing.  This  was  considered  to  show  the  unconscious  roots 
of  some  religious  ideas  in  the  infantile  psyche.  The 
French  sociologists  attribute  this  same  character  of  in¬ 
fantility  to  the  fact  that  religious  ideas  are  the  product 
of  collective  thought.  It  does  not  seem  to  be  necessary 
to  decide  between  these  alternative  theories  as  if  they 
were  mutually  exclusive  explanations.  Both  collective 
thinking  and  the  products  of  the  activity  of  the  un¬ 
conscious  mind  show  this  character,  which  marks  their 
relationship  with  primitive  ways  of  thinking.  Since  we 
have  every  reason  to  suppose  that  both  collective  think¬ 
ing  and  individual  unconscious  thinking  have  played  a 
part  in  building  up  religious  belief,  it  would  be  idle  to 
dispute  about  whether  it  owes  its  alogical  element  to 
one  or  other  of  these  causes.  We  may  notice  in  passing 
that  it  is  this  infantilism  which  they  possess  in  common 
that  is  at  the  root  of  the  relationship  between  myths 
and  dreams,  about  which  a  considerable  psychoanalytic 
literature  has  grown  up. 

While  acknowledging  the  value  of  the  researches  of 
the  writers  in  L’Annee  Sociologique,  I  see  no  reason  for 
accepting  their  view  that  the  sociological  point  of  view 
possesses  any  kind  of  ultimate  finality  which  makes  the 


148 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


psychological  method  of  approach  impossible.  On  the 
contrary,  this  view  seems  to  be  based  on  a  fallacious  as¬ 
sumption — the  assumption  that  the  only  psychological 
forces  which  are  at  work  in  the  production  of  religious 
ideas  are  social  forces.  There  seems,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  be  abundant  evidence  to  show  that  the  explanation 
of  religious  ideas  must  lie  partly  in  their  value  for  the 
experience  of  individuals  in  each  succeeding  generation 
which  has  accepted  them,  and  in  part  on  their  capacity 
for  being  translated  into  the  exact  language  of  logical 
thinking — in  other  words,  on  their  experiential  and 
rational  grounding  as  well  as  on  their  traditional 
grounding.1 

The  best  known  book  dealing  with  crowd  psychology 
is  The  Crowd,  by  M.  Le  Bon.  This  is  a  curiously  un¬ 
scientific  work,  which  combines  interesting  and  valuable 
observations  with  a  fanciful  background  of  psycho- 
physiological  theory  and  a  slipshod  method  which 
allows  the  author's  political  and  other  prejudices  to 
colour  all  his  observations.  This  work  has,  however, 
been  so  widely  read  and  so  slavishly  reproduced  by 
writers  on  the  present  and  allied  subjects  that  it  is  neces¬ 
sary  to  mention  it  here,  since  most  people  who  have 
thought  about  the  subject  at  all  will  have  had  their 
ways  of  thinking  about  it  to  some  extent  formed  by 
Le  Bon’s  writings. 

By  a  crowd,  for  the  purposes  of  his  study,  M.  Le  Bon 
means  a  group  of  persons  united  together  by  some  com¬ 
mon  purpose  or  interest,  such  as  a  political  meeting  or  a 
lynching  party.  The  characteristics  wdiich  he  distin¬ 
guishes  in  them  are  their  cruelty  and  lack  of  responsi- 


1For  a  more  adequate  discussion  of  the  views  here  mentioned, 
the  reader  is  referred  to  Group  Theories  oj  Religion  and  the  Indir 
vidual ,  by  Professor  C.  C.  J.  Webb. 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  149 


bility,  their  ready  response  to  an  emotional  and  their 
slight  response  to  an  intellectual  appeal,  and  their  high 
suggestibility.  The  high  suggestibility  of  a  crowd  is 
shown  by  its  rapid  and  vigorous  response  to  oratory 
which  would  leave  its  members  cold  if  it  were  addressed 
to  them  as  individuals.  This  results  from  the  fact  that 
each  of  the  individual  members  is  being  acted  upon  by 
herd-suggestion  (produced  by  all  the  other  members 
who  are  also  being  influenced  by  the  orator)  and  not 
merely  by  the  suggestions  of  the  orator  himself.  For 
this  reason,  it  is  common  in  some  forms  of  religious  ser¬ 
vice  for  the  conductor  to  make  the  congregation  all  per¬ 
form  some  conspicuous  action  which  testifies  to  their 
agreement  with  what  is  going  on.  The  Salvationists 
ejaculate  hallelujah  during  their  addresses  or  clap  out 
the  verses  of  a  hymn ;  the  members  of  a  Catholic  con¬ 
gregation  cross  themselves  or  perform  other  ritual  acts 
at  definite  times.  Even  if  an  audience  can  be  made  to 
laugh  during  an  address,  this  is  a  method  of  putting  into 
operation  the  force  of  herd-suggestion.  M.  Le  Bon  says, 
somewhat  cynically,  that  a  crowd  should  always  be  ap¬ 
pealed  to  through  their  emotions  and  never  through 
their  reason,  and  that  two  things  only  are  necessary  in 
mob  oratory — affirmation  and  repetition.  Affirmation 
in  a  confident  manner  and  repetition  is,  of  course,  the 
formula  for  successful  suggestion. 

With  no  touch  of  M.  Le  Bon’s  cynicism,  a  writer  on 
the  preaching  needed  in  revivals  1  gives  almost  identical 
advice : 

Revival  preaching  to  be  effective  must  be  positive. 
The  doubter  never  has  revivals.  ...  A  revival  is  a 

1  How  to  promote  and  conduct  a  successful  Revival ,  by  R.  A. 
Torrey,  p.  32. 


150  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

revolution  in  many  important  respects,  and  revolutions 
are  never  brought  about  by  timid,  fearful  or  depreca¬ 
tory  addresses.  They  are  awakened  by  men  who  are 
cocksure  of  their  ground,  and  who  speak  with  au¬ 
thority.  .  .  .  Revival  preaching  must  be  directed  to¬ 
wards  the  heart  and  not  the  head.  .  .  .  Get  hold  of 
the  heart  and  the  head  yields  easily. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  better  example  of 
affirmation  and  repetition  than  the  following  extract 
from  an  address  given  by  Spurgeon  to  open-air 
preachers,  printed  in  the  same  book  as  the  above.  The 
suggestion  which  is  being  repeated  is  that  they  should 
go  on  with  their  preaching.  Notice  particularly  the 
method  which  is  adopted.  There  is  no  development  of 
the  thought  and  no  argument  about  it.  It  is  simply 
repeated  unchanged  or  by  allusion: 

Go  on  wTith  your  preaching.  Cobbler,  stick  to  your 
last;  preacher,  stick  to  your  preaching.  In  the  great 
day,  when  the  muster  roll  shall  be  read,  of  all  those 
who  are  converted  through  fine  music,  and  church 
decoration,  and  religious  exhibitions  and  entertain¬ 
ments,  they  will  amount  to  the  tenth  part  of  nothing; 
but  it  will  always  please  God  by  the  foolishness  of 
preaching  to  save  them  that  believe.  Keep  to  your 
preaching;  and  if  you  do  anything  beside,  do  not  let 
it  throw  your  preaching  into  the  background.  In  the 
first  place  preach  and  in  the  second  place  preach  and 
in  the  third  place  preach. 

Believe  in  preaching  the  love  of  Christ,  believe  in 
preaching  the  atoning  sacrifice,  believe  in  preaching 
the  new  birth,  believe  in  preaching  the  whole  counsel 
of  God.  The  old  hammer  of  the  Gospel  will  still 
break  the  rock  in  pieces;  the  ancient  fire  of  Pentecost 
will  still  burn  among  the  multitude.  Try  nothing 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  151 


new,  but  go  on  with  preaching,  and  if  we  all  preach 
with  the  Holy  Ghost  sent  down  from  heaven,  the  re¬ 
sults  of  preaching  will  astound  us.  Why,  there  is  no 
end,  after  all,  to  the  power  of  the  tongue!  Look  at 
the  power  of  a  bad  tongue,  what  great  mischief  it  can 
do;  and  shall  not  God  put  more  power  into  a  good 
tongue,  if  we  will  but  use  it  aright?  Look  at  the 
power  of  fire,  a  single  spark  might  give  a  city  to  the 
flames;  even  so,  the  Spirit  of  God  being  with  us,  we 
need  not  calculate  how  much,  or  what  we  can  do: 
there  is  no  calculating  the  potentialities  of  a  flame,  and 
there  is  no  end  to  the  possibilities  of  divine  truth 
spoken  with  the  enthusiasm  which  is  born  of  the  Spirit 
of  God.  ...  Go  on!  go  on!  go  on!  In  God’s  name 
go  on!  for  if  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  does  not  save 
men,  nothing  will.1 

Either  directly  or  by  some  sort  of  allusion,  the  same 
suggestion  has  been  repeated  no  less  than  thirty-one 
times  in  the  course  of  thirteen  sentences.  When  we  read 
the  passage,  this  repetition  seems  a  barren  oratorical 
trick,  and  the  reading  of  it  leaves  us  cold.  But  we  must 
not  forget  the  influence  which  such  oratory  had  on  its 
hearers  wdien  its  suggestive  effect  was  reinforced  by  the 
fervid  confidence  of  delivery  produced  by  Spurgeon’s 
faith  in  the  message  he  was  delivering,  and  by  the 
prestige  which  his  reputation  attached  to  him. 

We  may  notice  here  that  successful  speaking  of  this 
kind  depends  in  part  on  the  power  of  the  speaker  to 
receive  suggestions  from  his  audience.  A  high  degree  of 
suggestibility  is  one  of  the  conditions  of  successful 
oratory.  The  speaker  is  continually  feeling  the  temper 
of  his  audience  and  the  success  wdth  which  his  sugges¬ 
tions  are  being  received.  He  varies  his  method  of  pres- 

1  Op.  cit.  pp.  221  and  222. 


152 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


entation  as  he  perceives  the  varying  responses  of  his 
audience.  If  he  said  something  at  the  beginning  repug¬ 
nant  to  them,  he  would  arouse  a  general  attitude  of 
contra-suggestion  and  his  address  would  fail.  But  after 
he  has  habituated  his  audience  to  receiving  suggestions 
from  him,  he  may  be  able  to  say  later  the  unwelcome 
thing  and  find  that  it  is  accepted  without  any  difficulty. 
This  attitude  of  being  in  affective  touch  with  their  audi¬ 
ences  will  be  found  to  be  adopted  more  or  less  con¬ 
sciously  by  most  (perhaps  all)  successful  speakers.  De¬ 
scriptions  of  their  methods  will  be  found  to  contain  some 
such  fact  as  the  following,  which  is  taken  from  an  ac¬ 
count  of  Evan  Roberts,  the  Welsh  revivalist : 

He  makes  the  audience  reveal  itself,  and  then  tells 
the  people  what  they  know  already.1 

It  is  this  fact  which  makes  a  carefully  prepared 
speech  of  so  little  value  as  compared  with  a  less  elo¬ 
quent  discourse  in  which  the  speaker  is  ceaselessly  vary¬ 
ing  his  language  in  response  to  the  changing  emotions 
which  he  feels  that  he  is  producing  in  his  audience. 

We  will  now  turn  to  the  consideration  of  the  more 
violent  and  crude  methods  of  suggestion  employed  in 
some  kinds  of  revival.  Nowhere  in  the  world  have  these 
been  developed  in  such  an  extraordinary  way  as  in 
America.  An  extreme  example  may  be  found  in  the 
method  of  preaching  adopted  by  the  successful  evangel¬ 
ist  and  ex-prize-fighter,  Billy  Sunday.  This  is  taken 
from  a  local  paper  of  Illinois: 

5843  converts,  683  in  a  day.  Total  gift  to  Mr  Sun¬ 
day,  $10,431.  Greatest  revival  in  history.  Will  attract 
the  attention  of  the  religious  w^orld.  Sermon  on 

1  Proceedings  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  vol.  xix.  p.  80. 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  158 


“Booze,”  the  greatest  effort  of  the  revival!  These  are 
all  headlines  to  the  report.  .  .  .  The  preacher  .  .  . 
began  with  his  coat,  vest,  tie  and  collar  off.  In  a  few 
moments  his  shirt  and  undershirt  were  gaping  open 
to  the  waist,  and  the  muscles  of  his  neck  and  chest 
were  seen  working  like  those  in  the  arm  of  a  black¬ 
smith,  while  perspiration  poured  from  every  pore.  His 
clothing  was  soaked,  as  if  a  hose  had  been  turned  on 
him.  He  strained,  and  twisted,  and  reached  up  and 
down.  Once  he  was  on  the  floor  for  just  a  second,  in 
the  attitude  of  crawling,  to  show  that  all  slime  cravded 
out  of  the  saloon;  then  he  was  on  his  feet  as  quickly 
as  a  cat  could  jump.  At  the  end  of  forty-five  minutes 
he  mounted  a  chair,  reached  high,  as  he  shouted,  then 
again  was  on  the  floor,  and  dropped  prostrate  to  illus¬ 
trate  a  story  of  a  drunken  man,  bounded  to  his  feet 
again  as  if  steel  springs  filled  that  lithe,  slender,  light¬ 
ning-like  body.  He  generally  breaks  a  common  kitchen 
chair  in  this  sermon,  and  this  came  after  a  terrible 
effort,  with  eyes  flashing,  face  scowling,  the  picture  of 
hate.  He  whirled  the  chair  over  his  head,  smashed  the 
chair  to  the  platform  floor,  whirled  the  shattered  wueck 
in  the  air  again,  and  threw  it  to  the  ground  in  front  of 
the  pulpit.  In  two  minutes  men  from  the  front  row 
were  tearing  the  wreck  to  pieces  and  dividing  it  up. 
.  .  .  Later,  men  carried  away  in  cheering  could  be  seen 
in  the  audience  waving  those  chair  fragments  in  the 
air.1 

The  appeal  to  fear  by  vivid  descriptions  of  hell-fire 
was  very  common  in  such  revivals.  Billy  Sunday  him¬ 
self  is  reported  to  have  been  generous  in  his  references 
to  brimstone.  The  following  is  an  extract  from  a  sermon 
by  Jonathan  Edwards,  who  preached  in  America  in  the 
early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century: 

Quoted  by  Mr  Cohen  in  his  Religion  and  Sex,  p.  172. 


154  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


We  can  conceive  but  little  of  the  matter;  but  to  help 
your  conception,  imagine  yourselves  to  be  cast  into  a 
fiery  oven,  or  a  great  furnace,  where  your  pain  would 
be  as  much  greater  than  that  occasioned  by  acciden¬ 
tally  touching  a  coal  of  fire  as  the  heat  is  greater. 
Imagine  also  that  your  body  were  to  lie  there  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour,  full  of  fire  and  all  the  while  full 
of  quick  sense.  What  horror  would  you  feel  at  the 
entrance  of  such  a  furnace.  How  long  would  that 
quarter  of  an  hour  seem  to  you?  And  after  you  had 
endured  it  for  one  minute,  how  overpowering  would 
it  be  to  you  to  think  that  you  had  to  endure  it  for 
the  other  fourteen.  But  what  would  be  the  effect 
upon  your  soul  if  you  must  lie  there  enduring  that 
torment  for  twenty-four  hours.  And  how  much  greater 
would  be  the  effect,  if  you  knew  you  must  endure  it  for 
a  whole  year.  And  how  vastly  greater  still,  if  you 
knew  you  must  endure  it  for  a  thousand  years.  Oh! 
then  how  would  your  heart  sink  if  you  knew  that  you 

must  bear  it  for  ever  and  ever — that  there  would 

* 

be  no  end,  that  for  millions  and  millions  of  ages,  your 
torments  would  be  no  nearer  to  an  end  and  that  you 
never,  never  would  be  delivered.  But  your  torments 
in  hell  will  be  immensely  greater  than  this  illustration 
represents.1 

The  terror  which  gripped  his  audiences  made  them 
cry  aloud  for  mercy  so  that  the  preacher  sometimes 
could  not  be  heard,  and  they  grasped  their  benches  to 
prevent  themselves  from  slipping  into  the  pit.  Oratory 
of  this  kind  is  not  common  at  the  present  time,  but  ‘the 
following  extract  from  a  sermon  preached  by  an  evan¬ 
gelist  in  New  York  so  recently  as  1907,  is  not  very 
different  in  spirit  from  those  of  Jonathan  Edwards: 

1  Primitive  Traits  in  Religious  Revivals.  Davenport  (New  York, 
1906),  pp.  112,  113. 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  155 


I  preach  hell  because  God  puts  His  special  blessing 
on  it.  convicting  sinners  and  sanctifying  believers, 
arousing  the  Church  to  greater  effort  for  the  salvation 
of  the  perishing.  .  .  .  Hell  has  been  running  jar  six 
thousand  years.  It  is  filling  up  every  day.  Where  is  it? 
About  eighteen  miles  from  here.  Which  way  is  it? 
Straight  down — not  over  eighteen  miles,  down  in  the 
bowels  of  the  earth.1 

The  intense  emotional  excitement  of  the  revival  tends 
to  be  accompanied  by  abnormal  effects  which  closely 
resemble  the  convulsive  attacks  of  hysteria.  These  are 
extremely  contagious  and  whole  multitudes  have  been 
known  to  fall  down,  to  jerk  their  bodies  in  extraordinary 
contortions,  to  bark,  to  laugh  and  to  dance.  Sceptics 
even  were  not  free  from  the  contagion,  if  they  were 
present  at  the  meetings.  As  an  example  of  these  phe¬ 
nomena,  we  may  take  the  following  account  of  a  great 
revival  in  Kentucky  in  1S01.  This  wTas  at  a  camp-meet¬ 
ing  of  nearly  twenty  thousand  persons  which  wTent  on 
for  several  days: 

The  whole  body  of  persons  who  actually  fell  helpless 
to  the  earth  during  the  progress  of  the  meeting  was 
computed  ...  to  be  three  thousand  persons,  about 
one  in  every  six.  .  .  .  “At  no  time  was  the  floor  less 
than  half  covered.  Some  lay  quiet,  unable  to  move 
or  speak.  Some  talked,  but  could  not  move.  Some 
beat  the  floor  with  their  heels.  Some,  shrieking  in 
agony,  bounded  about  like  a  live  fish  out  of  water. 
Many  lay  down  and  rolled  over  and  over  for  hours 
at  a  time.  Others  rushed  wildly  over  the  stumps  and 
benches,  and  then  plunged,  shouting,  ‘Lost!  Lost!’  into 
the  forest.”  .  .  .  Next  to  the  “falling”  exercise  the  most 

1  The  Religious  Consciousness.  Professor  J.  B.  Pratt  (New  York, 

1920),  p.  178. 


156  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


notable  and  characteristic  Kentucky  phenomenon  was 
the  “jerks.”  The  unhappy  victim  shook  in  every  joint. 
Sometimes  the  head  was  thrown  from  side  to  side  with 
great  rapidity.  Again  the  feet  were  affected,  and  the 
subject  would  hop  like  a  frog.  Often  the  body  would 
be  thrown  violently  to  the  ground,  where  it  would 
continue  to  bound  from  one  place  to  another.  Peter 
Cartwright  declares  that  he  has  seen  more  than  five 
hundred  persons  jerking  at  once  in  the  congregation. 
.  .  .  Another  phenomenon  not  so  common  was  the 
“barking”  exercise.  The  votaries  of  this  dignified  rite 
gathered  in  groups  on  all  fours,  like  dogs,  growling  and 
snapping  their  teeth  at  the  foot  of  a  tree  as  the  min¬ 
ister  preached, — a  practice  which  they  designated  as 
“treeing  the  devil”!  .  .  .  Many  of  these  camp-meeting 
folk  lay  insensible,  sometimes  for  hours,  but  when 
they  recovered  from  the  swoon  it  was  to  relate,  in 
what  were  called  “strains  of  heaven,”  experiences  of 
interviews  with  departed  friends  and  visions  of  glory.1 

Another  abnormal  manifestation  of  revival  meetings 
is  glossolalia  or  the  speaking  with  tongues.  This  name  is 
generally  applied  to  a  stream  of  meaningless  syllables, 
sometimes  mixed  with  a  few  real  words,  poured  out 
under  the  influence  of  intense  emotion.  The  interpreta¬ 
tion  by  bystanders  is  due  to  the  gestures  and  emotional 
expression  by  which  the  sounds  are  accompanied. 

There  were  also  very  grave  charges  at  the  Kentucky 
camp-meetings  of  serious  immorality.  Like  the  other 
phenomena  which  have  been  described,  this  charge 
could  be  paralleled  in  other  revivals.  There  is  less  rea¬ 
son  to  doubt  it  since  the  charge  was  made,  not  by  the 
ungodly,  but  by  ministers  taking  part  in  the  revival. 

Similar  phenomena  can  be  found  recorded  in  the  his- 

1  Primitive  Traits  in  Religious  Revivals ,  Davenport,  pp.  77-80. 


THE  HERD-INSTINCT  AND  RELIGION  157 


tory  of  English  revivals,  though  in  less  number  and  with 
less  intensity.  Wesley  did  not  employ  the  fear  of  hell 
with  such  freedom  as  Jonathan  Edwards,  but  there  are 
records  of  sermons  by  him  with  a  considerable  element 
of  hell-fire.  Two  of  his  disciples  succeeded,  near  Cam¬ 
bridge,  in  producing  such  morbid  effects  of  terror  by 
their  preaching,  that  the  account  of  it  in  Wesley’s  diary 
seems  more  like  the  history  of  a  terrible  outbreak  of  in¬ 
sanity  than  a  condition  deliberately  produced  in  honour 
of  God.  Evan  Roberts,  the  Welsh  revivalist,  did  not  use 
fear  as  a  motive  in  his  missions,  but  he  had  jerks  and 
dancing  amongst  his  congregation.  I  notice  that  Spur¬ 
geon  regarded  all  such  things  as  the  work  of  the  devil. 

Before  leaving  the  subject  of  revivals,  we  may  men¬ 
tion  one  question  which  a  student  of  the  subject  can 
hardly  fail  to  ask  himself.  We  find  in  the  revival  a  re¬ 
markably  uniform  succession  of  events  which  becomes 
so  conventional  in  its  form  that  one  might  describe  it 
as  a  religious  rite.  In  its  conventional  form  it  appears 
at  first  to  be  entirely  confined  to  Protestant  Chris- 
tianity>  We  are  led  to  enquire  whether  it  is  really  a 
spontaneous  growth  in  Protestant  Christianity,  or 
whether  it  is  a  phenomenon  to  be  met  elsewhere  in  the 
history  of  religions.  The  answer  to  this  question  is  sup¬ 
plied  by  Davenport  in  the  work  from  which  quotations 
have  already  been  given.  He  shows  that  the  revivals  of 
the  Kentucky  camp-meetings  are  very  much  like  the 
methods  of  twTo  Red  Indian  religious  movements.1 
These  are  the  Shaker  religion  of  the  Indians  of  Puget 
Sound  and  the  ghost-dance  religion.  In  these,  as  in  the 
Kentucky  camp-meetings,  cataleptic  and  convulsive 
phenomena  were  produced  by  mass  suggestion  in  which 

1  These  are  described  in  the  fourteenth  annual  report  of  the 
Bureau  of  Ethnology. 


158  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION1 


the  medicine-men  played  the  part  of  the  camp-meeting 
preachers.  Communion  with  the  spirit-world  was  en¬ 
joyed  during  trances  and  even  those  unsympathetic  to 
the  movement  were  unable  to  prevent  themselves  from 
being  overwhelmed  by  its  influence.  As  in  the  camp- 
meetings,  these  morbid  phenomena  were  accompanied 
by  real  moral  advance  and  the  Indians  who  wTere 
affected  by  them  made  vigorous  onslaughts  on  their 
racial  vices  of  drinking  and  gambling. 

Although,  as  I  have  pointed  out  in  an  earlier  chapter, 
suggestion  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  weapon  for  religion, 
and  although  even  emotional  violence  may  be  used  to 
produce  desirable  changes  in  peoples’  hearts,  it  should 
be  clear  that  the  methods  we  have  been  describing  have 
great  dangers.  The  jerks  and  other  morbid  symptoms, 
even  when  they  are  only  temporary,  are  undesirable. 
But  they  may  also,  although  perhaps  rarely,  end  in 
permanent  insanity.  The  weakening  of  moral  control 
tends,  as  has  been  mentioned,  to  result  in  immorality. 
In  addition  to  this  there  is  a  danger  of  revivals  losing 
their  beneficial  effect  on  conduct,  and  becoming  a  kind 
of  emotional  debauch  which  is  indulged  in  repeatedly. 
On  the  other  side  of  the  account  we  must  put  a  large 
number  of  changes  of  life,  which  have  been  real  changes 
for  the  better,  and  have  resulted  from  emotional 
revivals. 


CHAPTER  XII 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 

In  making  a  distinction  between  worship  and  prayer, 
I  propose  to  confine  the  word  worship  to  the  collective 
activity  corresponding  to  the  private  and  individual 
activity  of  prayer.  In  worship,  in  its  simplest  form,  we 
have  a  group  of  persons  trying  as  a  group  to  get  into 
relationship  with  God.  Here  we  find  at  work  all  those 
very  powerful  influences  wdiieh  we  have  seen  to  be  de¬ 
pendent  on  the  gregarious  instincts.  For  this  reason, 
worship  may  be  felt  to  be  valuable  even  when  group 
sentiment  is  not  very  strong,  for  the  individual  finds 
that  he  can  better  feel  himself  in  relationship  wfith  God 
when  he  seeks  Him  in  company  with  others.  The  con¬ 
tagion  of  feeling  resulting  from  herd-suggestion  gives 
him  a  depth  of  emotional  experience  which  the  ordinary 
man  does  not  attain  in  his  own  private  devotions.  In 
the  solemnity  of  church  services  he  experiences  a  sense 
of  the  divine  presence  compared  with  which  the  affec¬ 
tive  content  of  his  private  prayer  is  poor. 

In  The  Religious  Consciousness,  Pratt  distinguishes 
two  types  of  worship  wdiich  he  calls  the  objective  and 
the  subjective.  In  objective  wmrship,  the  leading  idea 
is  to  have  in  some  wTay  an  effect  on  God  or  to  communi¬ 
cate  with  Him;  while  in  subjective  wmrship,  the  aim  is 
to  have  some  sort  of  effect  on  the  minds  of  the  wor¬ 
shippers.  He  takes  as  examples  in  Christianity  the 
ideals  of  Catholicism  and  Protestantism,  and  says  that 

159 


160  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


the  leading  purpose  of  the  Mass  is  the  worship  of  God, 
while  that  of  the  Protestant  service  is  its  subjective 
effect  on  the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  worshippers.  He 
finds  the  same  distinction  between  the  objective  popular 
worship  in  Indian  temples,  and  the  more  sophisticated 
Arya  Sanaa j ;  while  one  may  also  find  in  India  the  most 
extreme  forms  of  subjective  worship  (at  least  in  theory) 
in  Jainism  and  Buddhism. 

I  intend  to  accept  this  distinction  between  subject¬ 
ive  and  objective  worship  for  the  purpose  of  discussing 
what  Pratt  calls  the  problem  of  worship.  At  the  same 
time,  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  that  his  application  of 
the  distinction  in  practice  appears  to  be  a  completely 
unwarranted  simplification  of  the  facts.  We  may  agree 
that  the  principal  object  of  the  Mass  is  the  worship  of 
God,  but  there  seems  to  be  no  sufficient  reason  for 
supposing  that  it  is  different  in  most  of  the  services  of 
Protestants.  Where  we  find  Protestant  services,  whose 
main  purpose  seems  to  be  the  subjective  effect  on  the 
minds  and  hearts  of  the  worshippers,  this  is  essentially 
a  changed  ideal  for  a  service  which  had  as  its  original 
intention  the  worship  of  God  as  definitely  as  has  the 
Mass.  The  sharp  distinction  made  by  Professor  Pratt 
between  the  objective  worship  of  Catholicism  and  the 
subjective  worship  of  Protestantism,  seems  to  be  an 
example  of  the  tendency  (deep-rooted  in  the  human 
mind)  to  make  a  clear  and  striking  exposition  by  draw¬ 
ing  in  black  and  white  what  can  only  be  represented 
truthfully  by  the  use  of  various  shades  of  grey. 

The  practical  problem  of  religious  worship  arises  from 
the  fact  that  the  subjective  effect  of  objective  methods 
of  worship,  although  not  aimed  at  directly,  is  found  to 
be  great;  but,  at  the  same  time,  these  methods  are 
ineffective  if  not  accompanied  by  the  belief  in  their 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


161 


objective  value.  Pratt  says  that  so  excellent  in  pro¬ 
ducing  subjective  effects  are  the  objective  methods  of 
the  Catholic  Church  that-  a  benevolent  atheist  might 
conceivably  do  his  best  to  forward  the  interests  of 
Catholicism.  If  he  were  a  wise  as  well  as  a  benevolent 
atheist,  however,  he  would  probably  keep  his  views  of 
the  truly  subjective  nature  of  the  worship  entirely  to 
himself.  Otherwise,  the  desired  result  might  become 
almost  unattainable.  This  Pratt  diagnoses  as  the  weak¬ 
ness  of  objective  worship,  that  it  is  impossible  to  those 
whose  minds  are  of  too  rationalistic  a  cast  to  be  able  to 
accept  the  beliefs  behind  it.  He  sums  up  the  difficulty 
by  saying  that  if  objective  worship  be  impossible  for  the 
intelligent,  and  if  subjective  without  objective  worship 
is  self-delusion,  there  is  an  end  of  all  worship  for  the 
modern  man.  The  second  statement  he  thinks  is  cer¬ 
tainly  true,  but  the  first  he  considers  is  probably  false. 
With  the  reasons  for  considering  that  objective  worship 
is  still  possible  for  the  intelligent  modern  man,  I  will 
not  here  deal,  since  this  is  the  kind  of  problem  I  am 
reserving  for  the  last  chapter. 

Prayer,  like  worship,  is  certainly  always  in  its  first 
intention  objective.  In  ordinary  speech  we  would  refuse 
to  use  the  word  prayer  of  any  vocal  activity  undertaken 
primarily  for  its  good  effects  on  the  mind  of  the  person 
using  it.  Essentially  it  is  directed  towards  a  super¬ 
human  being  in  the  belief  that  it  is  heard  by  the  being  to 
whom  it  is  addressed.  But  this  activity  has  subjective 
effects  as  well,  and  as  psychologists  we  are  primarily  in¬ 
terested  in  these.  Such  subjective  effects  as  are  pro¬ 
duced  by  prayer  are  plainly  related  to  the  effects  of 
autosuggestion  in  secular  life.  In  fact,  if  a  vocal  activity 
resembling  prayer  were  undertaken  purely  for  the  sake 
of  its  effects  on  the  mind  of  the  person  using  it,  this 


162 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


activity  would  be  pure  autosuggestion.  Prayer  differs 
from  such  simple  autosuggestion  in  the  fact  that  its 
mental  effects  are  only  incidental  and  are  not  what  is 
primarily  intended.  It  is  necessary,  however,  in  order 
to  approach  the  consideration  of  the  mental  effects  of 
prayer,  to  discuss  autosuggestion  at  some  length. 

This  task  is  made  easier  for  us  by  the  extraordinary 
command  of  popular  interest  which  has  been  achieved 
by  the  new  Nancy  school  of  autosuggestion,  described 
by  Professor  Baudouin  in  his  Suggestion  et  Autosugges¬ 
tion .  It  is  not  true,  of  course,  that  autosuggestion  is 
a  discovery  of  Dr  Coue,  as  writers  in  the  lay  press  ap¬ 
pear  to  believe.  Schools  of  autosuggestion  have  existed 
both  in  this  country  and  in  America,  of  which  the  New 
Thought  movement  is  a  prominent  example.  The  new 
Nancy  movement  will,  however,  be  a  convenient  one  to 
take  as  the  subject  of  an  exposition  of  autosuggestion, 
partly  because  it  is  so  well  known,  partly  because  it 
systematises  and  makes  explicit  important  details  of 
practice  which  are  neglected  by  other  systems. 

Autosuggestion,  in  all  its  forms,  is  the  same  process 
as  heterosuggestion  (or  suggestion  by  another  person) 
but  put  into  action  by  the  person  himself  and  not  by 
another  person.  As  in  ordinary  suggestion,  the  thought 
of  a  belief  or  a  course  of  action  becomes  realised  by  the 
subject,  i.e.  translated  into  an  actually  held  belief,  or  an 
actual  course  of  action.  Baudouin  distinguishes  between 
spontaneous  autosuggestions ,  in  which  the  matter  of  the 
suggestions  has  caught  the  attention  of  the  subject  and 
been  realised  by  him  spontaneously,  i.e.  without  his  own 
deliberate  co-operation,  and  reflective  autosuggestions 
in  which  the  same  process  is  made  to  take  place  inten¬ 
tionally. 

Spontaneous  autosuggestion  is  a  process  which  ap- 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


163 


pears  to  be  taking  place  fairly  commonly,  whenever  an 
idea  which  has  happened  to  catch  our  attention  realises 
itself.  An  opinion,  for  example,  which  wTe  have  often 
heard  repeated  tends  to  become  a  firmly  held  belief. 
When  we  see  a  fire  freshly  lighted,  we  may  begin  to  feel 
warmer,  although  it  is  not  yet  really  giving  out  an  ap¬ 
preciable  amount  of  heat.  An  illness  that  we  are  ahvays 
talking  and  thinking  about  tends  to  develop.  There  are 
two  fairly  obvious  conditions  which  an  idea  must  fulfil 
before  it  can  become  a  spontaneous  autosuggestion. 
The  first  is  that  it  shall  have  caught  the  attention,  the 
second  that  it  shall  be  enveloped  in  some  more  or  less 
powerful  affect.  The  new  Nancy  school  also  emphasises 
a  third  condition  for  any  autosuggestion,  that  it  shall 
be  held  in  attention  by  conscious  effort.  This  is  consid¬ 
ered  by  Baudouin  to  be  the  important  contribution  of 
Nancy  to  the  psychology  of  autosuggestion  and  is  called 
by  him  the  Law  of  Reversed  Effort .  This  is  stated  by 
him  as  follows: 

When  an  idea  imposes  itself  on  the  mind  to  such  an 
extent  as  to  give  rise  to  a  suggestion,  all  the  conscious 
efforts  which  the  subject  makes  in  order  to  counteract 
this  suggestion  are  not  merely  without  the  desired 
effect,  but  they  actually  run  counter  to  the  subject’s 
conscious  wishes  and  tend  to  intensify  the  suggestion.1 

These  conditions  may  be  illustrated  by  an  example 
given  in  an  earlier  chapter — the  impossibility  of  walk¬ 
ing  along  a  high  plank  with  a  sheer  drop  on  both  sides 
without  falling  off  ,  although  the  plank  may  be  of  such  a 
width  that  it  would  be  perfectly  easy  to  wTalk  along  it 
if  it  were  lying  on  the  floor.  Spontaneous  attention  is 

1  Suggestion  and  Autosuggestion,  by  Professor  Baudouin  (Eng, 
trans.),  p.  116. 


164  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


unavoidably  caught  by  the  idea  of  falling  off,  and  there 
is  a  very  powerful  emotional  accompaniment  (of  fear  or 
horror)  to  this  idea.  These  are  the  first  two  conditions 
which  have  been  mentioned  as  those  under  which  ideas 
tend  to  become  realised  by  spontaneous  autosuggestion. 
If  the  person  concerned  could  manage  either  not  to  think 
about  falling  off  at  all,  or  to  think  about  it  without  any 
strong  emotion,  his  danger  of  falling  off  would  be  less. 
The  law  of  reversed  effort  may  be  illustrated  by  the 
observation  of  the  fact  that  his  voluntary  efforts  to 
retain  his  balance  are  not  only  useless  but  tend  to  defeat 
that  end. 

Reflective  autosuggestion  has  as  its  objects  the  com¬ 
bating  of  noxious  spontaneous  autosuggestions,  and  the 
deliberate  attainment  of  the  good  mental  effects  acci¬ 
dentally  produced  by  desirable  spontaneous  autosugges¬ 
tions.  The  difficulty  in  the  practice  of  reflective 
autosuggestion  is  to  find  an  efficient  substitute  for  spon¬ 
taneous  attention.  A  voluntary  effort  to  think  of  and 
to  realise  the  object  of  the  desired  suggestion  is  found 
not  to  be  successful,  and  this  failure  is  accounted  for  by 
the  law  of  reversed  effort.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  most 
people  fail  when  they  try  to  follow  the  directions  of  one 
of  the  systems  of  autosuggestion.  They  are  told  to  con¬ 
centrate  on  an  idea.  For  them  concentration  means  an 
intense  voluntary  effort  to  think  of  it;  and  intense  vol¬ 
untary  effort  is  the  condition  under  which  autosugges¬ 
tion  is  most  certain  to  fail.  Those  who  have  experienced 
the  effects  of  intense  voluntary  effort  to  go  to  sleep  know 
the  condition  of  hopeless  wakefulness  which  such  an 
effort  induces.  The  practical  problem  to  make  success¬ 
ful  reflective  autosuggestion  possible  is  to  discover  some 
condition  in  which  voluntary  effort  is  as  small  as  pos¬ 
sible,  but  in  wdiich  the  mind  can  be  kept  occupied  with 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


165 


the  particular  thought  which  is  to  be  the  object  of  the 
suggestion. 

I  propose  to  discuss  the  states  of  mind  which  Profes¬ 
sor  Baudouin  distinguishes  at  this  stage  of  his  work,  in 
order  to  point  out  their  relationship  to  mental  states 
found  in  Christian  prayer  and  in  the  mental  self-culture 
of  Yoga.  The  condition  between  sleeping  and  waking, 
which  has  already  been  noticed  as  one  of  high  suggesti¬ 
bility,  is  a  state  in  which  spontaneous  autosuggestions 
are  stated  to  be  particularly  liable  to  realise  themselves. 
All  writers  on  autosuggestion  seem  to  be  aiming  at  the 
willed  production  of  a  similar  state  in  which  there  is  a 
certain  emptiness  of  mind  and  suspension  of  the  mental 
functions.  Sometimes,  however,  they  write  as  if  this 
were  a  state  to  be  attained  by  an  act  of  will,  and  their 
followers  find  themselves  misled  into  making  strenuous 
efforts  where  a  relaxation  of  effort  is  the  principal  neces¬ 
sity. 

One  of  the  characteristics  of  this  half-waking  condi¬ 
tion  is  what  Baudouin  calls  the  outcropping  of  the  sub¬ 
conscious.  The  mind  ceases  to  be  occupied  with  the 
voluntary  activity  of  thinking  in  words,  and  instead 
becomes  occupied  with  a  succession  of  vague  images 
which  are  surface  effects  of  the  repressed  contents  of 
the  unconscious.  A  similar  condition  is  found  in  reverie, 
that  is,  in  the  state  in  which  we  have  relaxed  the  volun¬ 
tary  activity  of  the  mind.  It  is  found  that  those  to 
whom  this  state  of  outcropping  is  most  normal  are  those 
to  whom  autosuggestion  is  easiest — as  artists,  women 
and  children.  The  first  step  which  Dr  Baudouin  sug¬ 
gests  in  the  practice  of  autosuggestion  is  an  education  of 
the  outcropping  by  practice  in  the  production  of  these 
states.  This  is  done  by  keeping  the  body  motionless  and 
the  muscles  relaxed  while  we  are  resting  on  a  comfort- 


166  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


able  armchair  under  conditions  as  free  as  possible  from 
such  external  distractions  as  noise.  The  eyes  are  closed 
and  the  effort  of  thinking  is  relaxed,  while  the  mind  is 
allowed  to  occupy  itself  with  the  vague  images  which 
float  past  it.  Baudouin  speaks  of  the  state  of  outcrop¬ 
ping  produced  by  such  a  relaxation  as  le  recueillement.1 

Le  recueillement,  however,  is  merely  a  preliminary 
stage.  The  equivalent  of  attention  for  which  we  are 
searching  is  a  combination  of  this  condition  of  out¬ 
cropping  with  the  effortless  permeation  of  the  mind  by 
a  single  idea.  Baudouin  calls  this  state  la  contention. 
It  is  sometimes  found  to  be  the  condition  of  the  mind  on 
waking  up  after  sleep ;  directed  thinking  is  at  a  mini¬ 
mum,  and  at  the  same  time  the  mind  is  exclusively 
occupied  with  one  single  idea.  This  is  the  condition  in 
which  the  idea  occupying  the  mind  will  realise  itself  as 
an  autosuggestion.  In  order  to  be  successful  in  the 
attainment  of  the  state  of  contention,  it  is  necessary  to 
cultivate  both  the  power  of  attention  and  of  relaxation. 
It  is  suggested  that  the  former  should  be  cultivated  by 
such  exercises  as  learning  by  heart,  and  the  latter  by 
the  practice  of  le  recueillement. 

The  state  of  contention  is  found  to  be  described  both 
in  the  literature  of  Christian  prayer,  under  the  name  of 
the  Prayer  of  Simplicity,  and  in  Yoga  practice,  under 
the  name  of  Dharana.  The  prayer  of  simplicity  will  be 
described  more  fully  later.  Normally,  it  was  produced 
involuntarily  as  an  effect  of  prolonged  discursive  medi¬ 
tation,  but  voluntary  efforts  to  attain  the  prayer  of 
simplicity  by  the  suppression  of  the  images  found  in  the 
condition  of  recueillement  were  made  by  the  Quietists. 

1 1  have  retained  the  original  French  for  Dr  Baudouin’s  names 
for  these  conditions,  since  their  English  equivalents  suggest  meanings 
remote  from  those  intended. 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


167 


The  Yogis  attained  Dharana  by  the  preliminary  prac¬ 
tice  of  Pratyahara.  This  was  the  condition  of  outcrop¬ 
ping  produced  in  le  recueillement  from  which  its  normal 
content  of  images  was  progressively  banished,  appar¬ 
ently  (as  in  quietism)  by  voluntary  effort. 

Reflective  autosuggestion  may  be  practised  by  taking 
advantage  of  the  condition  between  sleeping  and  waking 
by  permeating  the  mind  at  this  time  without  effort  with 
the  thought  which  it  is  desired  to  realise — the  idea,  for 
example,  of  the  cure  of  some  illness  or  weakness.  The 
difficulty  is  to  find  some  way  of  keeping  the  mind  per¬ 
meated  with  a  thought  without  the  effort  of  attending 
to  it.  The  way  this  is  done  in  the  new  Nancy  practice 
is  by  summing  up  the  desired  thought  in  some  formula 
which  is  repeated  over  and  over  again.  It  is  particularly 
emphasised  that  the  repetition  is  to  be  mechanical;  no 
effort  is  to  be  made  to  think  of  the  idea  it  is  intended  to 
convey.  If  one  wishes  to  make  an  autosuggestion  at 
some  other  time  of  the  day,  this  may  be  done  by  an  arti¬ 
ficial  production  of  the  state  of  la  contention.  Outcrop¬ 
ping  is  first  produced  by  the  practice  of  le  recueillement 
as  already  described,  and  the  mind  is  then  permeated 
with  the  desired  idea  by  the  repetition  of  a  formula  as 
before. 

Relaxation  is  not,  however,  the  only  method  of  pro¬ 
ducing  the  state  of  outcropping.  If  the  attention  is  kept 
fixed  for  some  time  on  one  subject,  it  relaxes  itself 
spontaneously  through  loss  of  interest  and  probably 
fatigue.  When  it  relaxes  itself  in  this  way,  a  state  of  out¬ 
cropping  is  produced  similar  to  that  in  le  recueillement 
or  reverie.  This  is  the  condition  which  Baudouin  calls 
hypnosis.  It  differs  from  reverie  in  the  fact  that  it  is 
more  favourable  to  the  production  of  the  state  of  con¬ 
tention  with  a  single  idea.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  in 


168 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


reverie  we  tend  to  have  dispersion  of  mind,  while  in 
hypnosis  the  immobility  with  which  the  state  started  re¬ 
mains  a  dominating  tendency,  hence  this  immobility  is 
readily  re-established  when  we  wish  to  transform  the 
state  into  one  of  contention  for  the  purposes  of  auto¬ 
suggestion. 

He  also  proposes  the  name  of  la  concentration  for  a 
state  of  hypnosis  produced  by  the  fixation  of  the  atten¬ 
tion  not  on  an  external  object  but  on  the  idea  which  is 
to  be  the  object  of  the  suggestion.  Notice  that  this  is 
not  the  state  of  intense  voluntary  attention  to  which  we 
generally  give  the  name  of  “concentration.”  He  defines 
this  condition  as  follows:  “a  state  of  autohypnosis  and 
of  persistent  contention  with  one  idea,  the  autohypnosis 
having  been  induced  by  the  lulling  influence  of  the  idea 
on  the  mind.”  The  simplest  way  of  producing  la  con¬ 
centration  is  to  sum  up  the  idea  in  a  short  phrase  and  to 
repeat  it  over  and  over  again,  either  aloud  or  sketching 
its  pronunciation  with  lips  and  tongue. 

We  may  notice  here  an  odd  difference  between  the 
practice  of  the  new  Nancy  school  in  the  attainment  of 
hypnosis  and  the  practice  of  religious  systems  when 
their  adherents  are  trying  to  attain  a  similar  state  of 
emptiness  of  mind.  The  new  Nancy  recommendation 
is  that  the  body  should  be  relaxed  on  a  comfortable 
chair.  In  the  mental  exercises  of  Yoga,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  meditant  adopts  a  position  of  extreme  discom¬ 
fort.  There  are  a  large  number  of  different  attitudes  he 
may  adopt  which  are  called  the  asana  positions,  all  of 
which  have  in  common  the  fact  that  they  are  positions 
of  great  muscular  strain.  In  one  of  them,  for  example, 
the  meditant  sits  bolt  upright  with  the  legs  folded  so 
that  each  of  the  feet  is  resting  on  the  thigh  of  the  other 
leg.  It  is  said  that  the  Yogi  can  remain  in  such  a  posi- 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


169 


tion  for  many  hours.  It  might  be  supposed  that  such 
continuous  discomfort  would  make  any  mental  exercise 
impossible,  yet  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  asana 
positions  have  been  continued  because  experience  has 
shown  that  they  help  forward  the  end  to  be  attained. 
Probably  the  explanation  is  to  be  found  by  an  extension 
of  Baudouin’s  explanation  of  the  condition  of  hypnosis 
as  a  result  of  the  fatiguing  of  the  attention.  The 
strained  posture  of  the  Yogi  immobilises  his  attention 
on  to  the  physical  discomfort  of  his  position  and  the 
subsequent  fatigue  of  the  attention  produces  the 
hypnoidal  condition  with  its  characteristic  tendency  to 
pass  into  contention  when  an  object  of  thought  is  pre¬ 
sented  to  it.  If  this  is  the  true  explanation  of  the  asana 
positions,  it  suggests  that  the  method  of  relaxation  is 
possibly  not  the  best  for  autosuggestion,  since  it  should 
tend  to  produce  reverie  and  dispersion  of  the  attention 
rather  than  the  fixity  of  attention  required.  It  may  also 
be  noticed  that  in  Christian  meditation  it  is  found,  as  a 
matter  of  common  experience,  that  the  comparatively 
uncomfortable  position  of  kneeling  is  better  than  re¬ 
laxation  on  a  comfortable  chair.  While  the  latter  posi¬ 
tion  makes  it  easy  to  detach  the  thoughts  from  imme¬ 
diate  stimuli,  it  also  encourages  the  vague  and  uncon¬ 
trolled  wandering  of  the  mind  found  in  reverie  or  day¬ 
dreaming.  For  this  reason  it  is  a  position  not  favoured 
for  meditation  in  which  the  control  of  the  thoughts  is 
the  principal  object. 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  the  method  of 
presenting  the  object  of  a  reflective  autosuggestion  to 
the  mind  is  the  mechanical  repetition  of  a  formula  em¬ 
bodying  the  suggestion.  An  important  practical  ques¬ 
tion  is  that  of  the  wording  of  this  formula.  We  will  sup¬ 
pose  that  we  are  suffering  from  toothache  and  wish  to 


170 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


remove  the  pain  by  autosuggestion.  If  we  use  the 
formula  I  want  to  be  free  from  this  pain,  we  shall  find 
such  a  formulation  too  weak  to  be  effective.  If  we  go  to 
the  opposite  extreme  and  say  I  have  no  toothache,  our 
present  experience  of  the  toothache  contradicts  us.  A 
suggestion  in  this  form  is  successful  only  with  those 
whose  critical  function  is  abnormally  undeveloped.  For 
more  ordinary  people,  it  is  necessary  to  adopt  some 
formula  which  is  intermediate  between  these  two  ex¬ 
tremes.  The  kind  which  is  recommended  is  one  which 
asserts  that  the  undesired  condition  is  growing  better. 
For  removing  the  pain  of  toothache,  we  may  use  the 
form:  This  is  passing  away.  If  we  wish  to  use  autosug¬ 
gestion  to  help  ourselves  to  sleep,  we  may  repeat:  I  am 
falling  asleep.  A  detail  insisted  on  by  the  new  Nancy 
school  is  that  the  formula  should  be  gabbled.  This  is  to 
prevent  the  spontaneous  autosuggestion  contradicting 
the  formula  from  arising  in  the  mind  between  each  repe¬ 
tition  of  it.  For  example,  if  the  repetition  of  the 
formula  I  am  falling  asleep  is  slow,  it  is  difficult  to  pre¬ 
vent  the  mind  from  thinking  between  each  repetition, 
I  am  not  really,  I  am  still  as  wide-awake  as  ever.  If  this 
happens,  the  spontaneous  autosuggestion  of  remaining 
awake  will  tend  to  realise  itself  and  thus  defeat  the  re¬ 
flective  autosuggestion  of  falling  asleep. 

The  following  are  the  uses  of  reflective  autosugges¬ 
tion  claimed  by  Dr  Baudouin.  It  can  undo  the  evil  work 
of  noxious  spontaneous  autosuggestions — the  illnesses 
which  result  from  morbid  preoccupation  with  the  state 
of  our  health,  and  so  on.  It  can  be  used  for  the  cure  of  all 
functional  disorders  such  as  tics  and  hysterical  paraly¬ 
ses  and  swellings.  It  is  also  of  value  in  certain  organic 
complaints.  It  can  always  help  the  natural  process  of 
cure,  and  it  can  undo  the  part  played  even  in  real  or- 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


171 


ganic  disorders  by  spontaneous  autosuggestion.  It  may 
also  be  used  as  a  means  of  removing  bad  habits,  and  of 
obtaining  complete  control  over  sleep.  In  the  new 
Nancy  school,  it  is  not  recommended  that  particular 
suggestions  for  the  removal  of  specific  troubles  should 
be  frequently  repeated.  After  a  trouble  has  been  made 
the  subject  of  a  particular  suggestion,  it  is  claimed  that 
it  is  sufficient  to  repeat  about  twenty  times  every  night 
and  morning  the  general  formula  :  Day  by  day,  in  all  re¬ 
spects,  I  get  better  and  better. 

Autosuggestion  is  connected  with  a  particular  aspect 
of  prayer — its  subjective  effect  on  the  person  praying. 
With  one  exception  (to  be  noted  later)  prayer  is  not  an 
activity  undertaken  merely  for  the  sake  of  its  effects  on 
the  mind  or  character  of  the  subject,  but  primarily  for 
the  purpose  of  coming  into  communion  with  or  other¬ 
wise  affecting  the  Being  to  whom  prayer  is  addressed. 
Its  subjective  effects,  although  they  may  be  important, 
are  generally  only  incidental  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  person  praying.  It  is  these  subjective  effects,  how¬ 
ever,  which  come  within  the  province  of  a  psychological 
study;  and,  regarded  as  a  producer  of  subjective  effects, 
prayer  is  clearly  of  the  nature  of  reflective  autosugges¬ 
tion  undertaken  with  the  intention  of  bringing  about 
changes  in  that  sum  of  mental  dispositions  which  we  call 
character.  Even  regarded  merely  as  autosuggestion,  it 
is  probable  that  prayer  must  always  be  more  effective 
than  autosuggestion  deliberately  and  self-consciously 
carried  out.  For  precisely  that  element  which  was  seen 
to  be  most  essential  and  most  difficult  to  attain  in 
reflective  autosuggestion — the  abandonment  of  volun¬ 
tary  effort — is  provided  naturally  by  the  mental  atti¬ 
tude  of  prayer.  We  may  take  as  an  example  of  this,  the 
familiar  experience  which  is  heard  again  and  again  in 


172  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


the  testimony  of  religious  converts  who  say  “I  struggled 
against  such  and  such  a  sin,  but  its  power  over  me 
simply  grew  greater.  Then  I  realised  that  I  could  not 
conquer  in  my  own  strength  and  I  gave  up  struggling 
and  left  it  in  the  hands  of  the  Lord,  and  the  burden  of 
my  sin  rolled  away.”  Without  prejudice  to  the  religious 
explanation  of  the  convert,  may  wTe  not  see  in  this  a 
simple  working  of  psychological  mechanisms?  First, 
there  is  the  spontaneous  autosuggestion  that  he  will 
fall  into  his  habitual  sin,  which,  by  the  law  of  reversed 
effort,  becomes  strengthened  by  a  voluntary  struggle 
against  it.  Then  in  prayer  he  saturates  his  mind  with 
the  thought  of  the  desired  improvement,  while  his  trust 
in  an  all-powerful  God  wThose  grace  can  save  him  from 
the  sin,  makes  possible  that  abandonment  of  voluntary 
effort  which  was  impossible  in  his  preliminary  period 
of  struggle.  So  unconsciously  he  has  produced  in  him¬ 
self  the  conditions  for  effective  reflective  autosugges¬ 
tion,  and  he  finds  himself  freed  without  effort  from  a  sin 
against  which  his  efforts  were  unavailing.  Thus,  relig¬ 
ious  faith  provides  in  perfection  the  conditions  for  the 
subjective  working  of  prayer  to  become  effective  as 
autosuggestion ;  conditions,  let  it  be  noted,  which  can¬ 
not  be  reproduced  by  using  the  form  of  prayer  without 
the  faith. 

When  speaking  of  prayer,  I  intend  to  use  the  word  in 
the  extended  sense  usual  to  devotional  writers  on  the 
subject,  and  not  merely  to  mean  praise  and  petition.  In 
this  extended  sense,  we  call  prayer  any  mental  exercise 
whose  aim  is  religious,  or  any  mental  state  of  religious 
character.  In  Christianity,  if  we  wish  to  take  over  a 
terminology  for  the  science  of  prayer,  we  are  almost  in¬ 
evitably  led  to  adopt  that  of  Roman  Catholicism.  The 
reason  for  this  is  not  merely  that  prayer  has  been  more 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


173 


developed  amongst  Roman  Catholics  because  it  is  the 
sole  occupation  of  some  of  the  religious  orders ;  but  also 
that  the  custom  of  revealing  their  methods  of  prayer 
to  their  directors  has  led  to  an  introspective  habit  of 
mind  which  had  as  its  fruit  a  methodical  classification 
of  types  of  prayer  which  is  without  parallel  in  any  other 
branch  of  Christianity.  I  shall,  therefore,  in  this  part 
of  my  work,  follow  the  terminology  of  Fr.  Poulain,  in 
his  Graces  of  Interior  Prayer  (a  terminology  which  is 
largely  modelled  on  that  of  St  Teresa),  although  my 
angle  of  approach  is  a  different  one  from  his. 

First,  we  may  notice  that  in  devotional  books  are  to 
be  found  a  simple  form  of  prayer  called  acts,  which  are 
almost  purely  autosuggestions  and  are  intended  as  such. 
At  the  opposite  extreme  is  to  be  found  ordinary  vocal 
prayer,  i.e.  prayer  in  the  popular  sense  of  praise  and 
petition,  in  which  the  whole  of  the  intention  is  centred 
on  the  Being  to  whom  prayer  is  addressed  and  not  at  all 
on  the  production  of  any  desirable  mental  effects.  Be¬ 
tween  these,  there  is  the  wide  range  of  the  various  forms 
of  mental  prayer  of  which  the  most  familiar  is  medita¬ 
tion.  In  these  the  purpose  of  mental  self-improvement 
and  of  entering  into  communion  with  God  are  inextri¬ 
cably  mingled.  Some  forms  of  meditation  are  very 
much  like  forms  of  non-religious  mental  exercise  in 
which  mental  culture  is  the  only  object.  But  in  all 
religious  meditation,  the  religious  element  is  present 
as  well. 

First,  we  may  consider  the  acts  which  are  simple  auto¬ 
suggestions  whose  object  is  to  strengthen  belief  or  love, 
or  self-sacrifice,  or  any  other  desired  mental  disposition. 
The  following,  which  will  serve  as  an  example  of  what  is 
meant,  is  an  act  of  faith  copied  from  a  devotional 
book: 


174  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


0  my  God,  I  believe  with  a  most  firm  faith  all  those 
things  which  Thou  hast  revealed  in  the  Holy  Scriptures 
and  which  Thy  Holy  Church  teaches.  I  believe  in  One 
True  and  Living  God,  my  beginning  and  my  end,  and 
that  in  this  One  God  there  are  Three  distinct  Persons, 
Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost.  I  believe  that  the 
Second  Person,  God  the  Son,  became  Man,  and 
died  upon  the  Cross,  to  deliver  us  from  all  sin,  death, 
and  hell.  When  I  cannot  understand  Thy  Revelation, 
I  bow  down  my  understanding  and  my  will  to  worship 
Thee.  In  this  faith  I  now  live;  in  the  same,  by  Thy 
grace,  I  resolve  to  die.  Lord,  increase  my  faith. 

In  connection  with  vocal  prayer,  there  is  little  to 
notice  of  psychological  interest  in  addition  to  what  has 
already  been  said  about  prayer  in  general.  Perhaps, 
however,  it  will  be  well  to  notice  that  every  effort  of 
vocal  prayer  is,  apart  from  its  immediate  Godward  in¬ 
tention,  a  means  of  devotional  education.  There  is  a 
temptation,  at  the  present  time,  on  the  strength  of  a 
superficial  acquaintance  with  the  literature  of  mysti¬ 
cism,  for  advisers  in  devotional  practice  to  decry  the 
practice  of  praying  in  words  even  by  beginners,  and  to 
recommend  that  prayer  should  only  be  practised  when 
it  is  felt  to  be  real.  From  such  dangers,  Catholic  mysti¬ 
cism  has  been  saved  by  its  effective  touch  with  the  needs 
of  the  ordinarily  devout  person.  It  should  be  noticed 
that  for  the  education  of  the  subconscious  in  reflective 
autosuggestion  a  form  of  words  is  used,  and  so  far  as  one 
desires  a  similar  effect  to  follow  from  prayer,  a  similar 
method  must  be  used.  It  is  true  that  there  are  later 
forms  of  non-mystical  prayer  in  which  thinking  in  words 
is  not  carried  on,  but  it  seems  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  such  a  later  development  is  a  result  of  subconscious 
dispositions  already  produced  by  verbal  exercises.  And, 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


175 


if  the  religious  man  desires  to  develop  a  devotional 
habit  of  mind,  it  is  certain  that  he  can  only  do  this  by 
carrying  out  the  same  form  of  prayer  whatever  his 
feelings  may  be.  The  closest  psychological  parallel  to 
this  is  perhaps  also  reflective  autosuggestion.  An  auto¬ 
suggestion  is  not  practised  only  when  the  subject  feels 
real  affect  in  connection  with  it. 

The  devotion  of  the  Rosary  is  one  which  approaches 
to  meditation  proper.  In  the  recitation  of  the  Rosary, 
the  state  called  contention  by  Baudouin,  is  induced  by 
the  repetition  of  the  Hail  Mary,  while  the  attempt  is 
made  to  keep  the  mind  fixed  on  the  thought  of  one  of 
the  fifteen  mysteries.  This  is  clearly  an  exercise  allied  to 
the  Mantra  Yoga,  in  which  there  is  a  similar  repetition 
of  one  of  the  formulae  called  mantras,  or  of  the  word 
Aum.  If  in  the  Rosary,  the  formula  repeated  were  ex¬ 
pressive  of  the  mystery  itself,  this  would  be  an  example 
of  what  Baudouin  calls  concentration. 

As  a  typical  example  of  meditation,  we  may  take  the 
Spiritual  Exercises  of  St  Ignatius  Loyola,  This  is  a 
series  of  discursive  reflections  supposed  to  be  made  by  a 
person  during  the  course  of  a  retreat  lasting  a  month. 
Each  of  these  was  supposed  to  take  an  hour,  and  five 
were  performed  each  day. 

Each  meditation  was  preceded  by  a  preparatory 
prayer  asking  that  its  performance  may  be  directed  to 
the  glory  of  God.  The  retreatant  then  constructed 
in  visual  imagery  the  object  of  the  meditation  (ver  con 
la  vista  de  la  imaginacion  el  lugar  corporeo  donde  se 
halla  la  cosa  que  quiero  contemplar).  This  was  fol¬ 
lowed  by  a  prayer  for  the  appropriate  emotions — for 
joy,  sorrow  or  shame,  according  to  the  subject  of  the 
meditation. 

The  meditation  was  conventionally  divided  into  three 


176 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


parts.  As  a  typical  example,  I  will  describe  the  first  of 
the  exercises,  which  has  as  its  subject  three  sins.  The 
first  part  of  this  meditation  is  on  the  sin  of  the  fallen 
angels.  The  instructions  to  the  meditant  are  as  follows: 

The  first  point  will  be  to  carry  the  memory  over  the 
first  sin,  which  was  that  of  the  Angels,  and  then  the 
understanding  over  the  same,  reasoning;  then  the  will, 
seeking  to  remember  and  understand  it  all,  that  I  may 
the  more  blush  and  be  confounded,  bringing  into  com¬ 
parison  with  the  one  sin  of  the  Angels  those  many  sins 
of  mine;  and  seeing  that  they  for  one  sin  have  gone  to 
hell,  how  often  I  have  deserved  it  for  so  many.  I  say, 
to  bring  into  memory  the  sin  of  the  Angels,  how  hav¬ 
ing  been  created  in  grace,  and  then  refusing  to  help 
themselves  by  the  aid  of  their  liberty  to  pay  reverence 
and  obedience  to  their  Creator  and  Lord,  coming  to 
pride,  they  were  changed  from  grace  to  malice,  and 
cast  down  from  heaven  to  hell;  and  so  consequently 
to  discourse  more  in  detail  with  the  understanding,  and 
thereupon  more  to  stir  the  affections  by  the  will. 

In  the  second  and  third  parts,  he  is  instructed  to  carry 
the  three  faculties  of  memory,  understanding  and  will, 
in  the  same  manner,  over  the  sin  of  Adam  and  Eve,  and 
over  the  sin  of  some  particular  person  who  has  gone  to 
hell  for  one  mortal  sin.  The  meditation  ends  with  a 
colloquy  in  which  the  meditant  imagines  Christ  or  God 
the  Father  or  the  Blessed  Virgin  before  him: 

“The  colloquy,”  says  St  Ignatius,  “is  made,  properly 
speaking,  just  as  one  friend  speaks  to  another,  or  a 
servant  to  his  master,  now  asking  for  some  favour,  now 
reproaching  oneself  for  some  evil  done,  now  telling 
out  one’s  affairs  and  seeking  counsel  in  them.” 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


177 


The  course  of  meditations  was  to  be  made  with  the 
accompaniments  of  solitude,  penitence  and  exterior 
penances  (fasting  and  other  austerities).  His  instruc¬ 
tions  as  to  posture  are  much  less  systematised  than  those 
of  the  Yogis,  and  appear  to  be  entirely  different  in  their 
aim.  He  tells  the  meditant  that  he  should  “enter  upon 
the  contemplation,  now  kneeling,  now  prostrate  on  the 
ground,  now  lying  back  with  uplifted  face,  now  sitting, 
now  standing,  aiming  ever  at  seeking  what  I  want.” 

A  small  point  which  the  psychologist  will  find  inter¬ 
esting  is  that  St  Ignatius  makes  the  following  recom¬ 
mendation  : 

after  going  to  bed,  when  I  am  composing  myself  to 
sleep,  for  the  space  of  one  Hail  Mary  to  think  of  the 
hour  at  which  I  ought  to  rise,  and  to  what  purpose, 
recapitulating  the  Exercise  which  I  have  to  make. 

Some  Protestant  critics  of  the  Ignatian  method  make 
a  great  deal  of  what  he  says  about  the  control  of  breath¬ 
ing  during  prayer.  These  criticisms  are  not  always  very 
fair  nor  do  they  show  any  intelligent  grasp  of  the  nature 
of  the  system.  Although  methods  of  breathing  control, 
Pranayama,  play  a  large  part  in  the  devotional  prac¬ 
tices  of  Yoga,  they  do  not  in  the  Ignatian  exercises,  nor 
(so  far  as  I  know)  in  any  other  Christian  devotional 
system.  The  only  mention  St  Ignatius  makes  of  the 
breath  is  a  trivial  one.  It  is  in  what  he  calls  prayer 
by  rhythmical  beats,  the  method  of  which  is  that: 

with  each  breath  or  respiration  one  is  to  pray  mentally, 
saying  one  word  of  the  Our  Father,  or  of  any  other 
prayer  that  is  being  recited,  so  that  one  word  only  is 
said  between  one  breath  and  another;  and,  in  the 
length  of  time  between  one  breath  and  another,  one  is 


178  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


to  look  chiefly  to  the  meaning  of  such  word,  or  to  the 
person  to  whom  one  recites  it,  or  to  one’s  own  lowly 
estate,  etc. 

Probably  this  is  a  method  of  meditation  which  would  be 
found  to  be  easy  during  external  distractions. 

A  particularly  simple  form  of  meditation  which  occu¬ 
pies  the  third  and  fourth  week  of  the  Exercises  is  what 
St  Ignatius  calls  a  contemplation.  This  is  a  meditation 
in  which  the  subject  is  an  incident  from  the  life  of  Our 
Lord,  and  the  preparatory  composition  of  place  is  sim¬ 
ply  the  visualisation  of  the  scene  of  this  incident.  There 
is  some  confusion  caused  by  the  fact  that,  in  mystical 
theology,  the  word  contemplation  is  used  in  an  entirely 
different  sense  to  mean  the  characteristic  mental  state 
of  mystical  prayer.  It  seems  better  to  avoid  the  con¬ 
fusion  by  restricting  the  word  contemplation  to  the  lat¬ 
ter  sense  of  it,  and  to  describe  the  meditation  from  an 
incident  in  the  gospels  as  an  Ignatian  contemplation. 

We  may  next  ask  what  is  the  purpose  of  meditation? 
In  reading  the  Exercises  of  St  Ignatius,  we  are  struck 
by  the  fact  that  their  immediate  aim  is  essentially  a 
practical  one.  It  is  to  enable  the  retreatant  to  make  a 
practical  choice  between  a  life  in  which  the  religious 
motive  is  the  dominant  one  and  a  more  ordinary  life 
in  which  action  is  dictated  by  a  variety  of  motives.  In 
some  cases,  but  not  in  all,  this  is  expected  to  resolve 
itself  into  a  choice  between  the  monastic  life  and  the  life 
of  the  world.  In  all  cases,  the  purpose  of  the  medita¬ 
tions  is  to  determine  the  retreatant  in  the  choice  of 
what  would  be  called  in  the  language  of  Protestant  de¬ 
votion  consecration,  or  a  surrender  to  the  will  of  God. 

This  practical  aim  does  not,  however,  exhaust  the 
purpose  of  meditation.  It  is  a  method  of  education  of 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


179 


the  subconscious,  as  is  the  new  Nancy  autosuggestion. 
The  meditations  on  sin  are  designed  to  strengthen  the 
emotional  resistance  against  sin.  (It  must  be  remem¬ 
bered  that  his  use  of  auricular  confession  protects  the 
user  of  the  Exercises  from  the  dangers  which  we  have 
seen  to  attend  a  too  great  emotional  reaction  against 
sin.)  The  Ignatian  contemplation  strengthens  the  feel¬ 
ing  of  love  for  and  of  belief  in  the  Incarnate.  The  collo¬ 
quies  strengthen  both  the  belief  in  the  persons  to  whom 
they  are  addressed  and  the  emotions  connected  with 
them.  We  may  sum  all  this  up  by  saying  that  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  the  education  of  the  subconscious  achieved  by 
the  meditations  is  the  strengthening  of  the  religious 
sentiment.  This  is  not,  of  course,  inconsistent  with  the 
view  that  their  aim  is  also  practical,  for  the  strengthen¬ 
ing  of  any  sentiment  means  also  the  development  of  the 
behaviour  which  springs  from  that  sentiment.. 

It  is  true  that  Protestantism  has  not  very  much 
developed  the  practice  of  meditation,  and  probably 
Protestantism  is  poorer  for  its  loss.  The  loss  is,  how¬ 
ever,  less  than  might  appear  at  first  sight.  The  educa¬ 
tion  of  the  subconscious,  accomplished  by  meditation  in 
the  mind  of  the  Catholic,  is  accomplished  for  the  Prot¬ 
estant  by  sermons,  by  scriptural  reading,  and  by  vocal 
prayer.  The  very  much  larger  place  taken  by  sermons 
in  Protestant  devotion  is  probably  accounted  for  by  the 
fact  that  they  are  required  to  fulfil  this  need  previously 
supplied  by  meditation. 

The  kind  of  mental  prayer  so  far  described  has  been 
clearly  an  activity  of  directed  thinking.  In  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  the  faculty  psychology,  it  is  a  prayer  oj  the 
understanding.  But  if  meditation  be  habitual,  it  is  not 
found  to  remain  in  this  form.  Habitual  meditation  on 
religious  subjects  finally  makes  them  so  familiar  to  the 


180 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


mind  that  when  the  meditant  directs  his  attention  to¬ 
wards  them,  he  passes  immediately  into  a  condition  of 
contention  with  the  idea  of  the  subject  of  meditation. 
In  other  words,  directed  thinking  practically  ceases 
while  the  mind  remains  permeated  with  the  idea  in 
question.  Any  attempt  at  discursive  meditation  be¬ 
comes  difficult  at  this  stage,  and  the  only  voluntary  ac¬ 
tivity  necessary  is  that  required  to  keep  the  mind 
from  wandering  from  the  subject  in  hand.  This  state  of 
prayer  is  called  the  prayer  of  simplicity  or  acquired  con¬ 
templation.  I  have  already  pointed  out  that  this  ap¬ 
pears  to  be  the  same  as  the  Yoga  dharanya.  The  Quiet- 
ists  taught  that  this  state  should  be  induced  by  the 
deliberate  suppression  of  all  mental  activity  in  prayer. 
Thus,  Molinos  says :  “consider  nothing,  desire  nothing, 
will  nothing,  endeavour  after  nothing;  and  then  in 
everything,  thy  soul  will  live  reposed  with  quiet  and 
enjoyment.”  This  teaching,  however,  was  strongly 
opposed  by  orthodox  theologians,  particularly  by  the 
Jesuits,  who  considered  that  although  the  prayer  of 
simplicity  might  come  as  a  result  of  meditation  in  the 
ordinary  way,  no  attempt  ought  to  be  made  to  suspend 
mental  activity  in  order  to  reach  it. 

If  we  wish  to  understand  at  all  the  different  kinds  of 
prayer,  it  seems  desirable  to  distinguish  the  prayer  of 
simplicity  from  the  different  forms  of  mystical  prayer 
which  will  be  discussed  in  the  next  chapter.  There 
seems  to  be  adequate  psychological  justification  for  the 
distinction,  and  it  can  only  lead  to  confusion  of  thought 
to  apply  the  name  Prayer  of  Quiet  to  the  non-mystical 
prayer  of  simplicity.  The  two  features  particularly  to 
be  noticed  about  this  state  of  contention,  called  the 
prayer  of  simplicity,  are  the  extent  to  which  it  is  under 
voluntary  control  and  the  variety  of  subjects  with  which 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


181 


it  may  be  occupied.  In  both  of  these  respects  it  differs 
from  mystical  prayer.  It  is  entered  on  voluntarily  and 
may  be  left  by  a  simple  redirection  of  the  attention.  It 
may  be  contention  with  any  religious  idea.  The  idea 
may  be  simply  that  of  the  presence  of  God,  but  not 
necessarily. 

A  form  of  prayer  intermediate  between  ordinary  med¬ 
itation  and  the  prayer  of  simplicity  is  called  affective 
prayer.  This  is  a  discursive  meditation  in  which  the 
directed  thinking  is  less  while  the  emotional  accompani¬ 
ments  are  greater  than  in  ordinary  meditation.  In  the 
following  extract  from  Fr.  Nouet,  both  affective  prayer 
and  the  prayer  of  simplicity  are  described: 

When  the  man  of  prayer  has  made  considerable 
progress  in  meditation,  he  passes  insensibly  to  affective 
prayer,  which,  being  between  meditation  and  contem¬ 
plation,  as  the  dawn  is  between  the  night  and  the 
day,  possesses  something  both  of  the  one  and  of  the 
other.  In  its  beginnings  it  contains  more  of  medita¬ 
tion,  because  it  still  makes  use  of  reasoning,  although 
but  little  in  comparison  with  the  time  it  devotes  to  the 
affections;  because,  having  acquired  much  light  by 
the  prolonged  use  of  considerations  and  reasonings,  it 
enters  at  once  into  its  subject,  and  sees  all  its  develop¬ 
ments  without  much  difficulty,  whence  it  is  that  the 
will  is  soon  moved.  Hence  it  arises  that  in  proportion 
as  it  perfects  itself,  it  discards  reasonings,  and  being 
content  with  a  simple  glance,  with  a  sweet  remem¬ 
brance  of  God  and  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  only  Son,  it 
produces  many  loving  affections  according  to  the  vari¬ 
ous  motions  that  it  receives  from  the  Holy  Ghost.  But 
when  it  has  arrived  at  the  highest  point  of  affection,  it 
simplifies  its  affections  equally  with  its  lights;  so  that 
the  soul  will  remain  sometimes  for  an  hour,  sometimes 
for  a  day,  sometimes  more,  in  the  same  sentiments  of 


182 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


love,  or  contrition,  or  reverence,  or  some  other  move¬ 
ment  the  impression  of  which  she  has  received.1 

Before  we  pass  on  to  mystical  prayer,  there  are  a  few 
questions  in  connection  with  the  relationship  between 
autosuggestion  and  heterosuggestion  and  religious  prac¬ 
tice,  wThich  may  conveniently  be  dealt  with  here.  First, 
we  may  notice  the  connection  between  the  therapeutic 
use  of  suggestion  and  religion.  It  is  generally  supposed 
that  the  miraculous  cures  of  Holy  Places  are  results  of 
autosuggestion,  and  the  attempt  to  revive  gifts  of  heal¬ 
ing  in  religious  bodies  at  the  present  time  is  largely  an 
attempt  to  replace  this  uncontrolled  healing  suggestion, 
by  the  same  thing  deliberately  used  with  full  conscious¬ 
ness  of  its  scientific  meaning.  If  it  be  granted  that  the 
cures  of  Lourdes  are  results  of  autosuggestion,  working 
under  the  particularly  favourable  conditions  of  a  simple 
religious  trust,  which  makes  the  requisite  abandonment 
of  effort  reasonable  and  easy,  it  by  no  means  follows 
that  the  scientifically  self-conscious  use  of  the  same 
means  as  methods  of  autosuggestion,  would  produce  the 
same  effect.  If  we  ask  a  cripple  to  undertake  a  pil¬ 
grimage  because  it  will  set  to  work  a  curative  auto¬ 
suggestion,  we  are  not  reproducing  the  conditions  under 
which  he  might  be  cured  if  we  told  him  to  go  on  a 
pilgrimage  because  the  Blessed  Virgin  would  work  a 
miracle  for  him,  and  we  cannot  expect  the  same  results. 
This  may  be  one  of  the  unavoidable  losses  which  accom¬ 
pany  intellectual  enlightenment.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
may  be  possible  for  the  modern  man,  with  full  accept¬ 
ance  of  the  point  of  view  of  modern  science,  to  find  a 
reasonable  ground  for  approaching  religious  healing 

1  Conduite  de  V Homme  d’Oraison,  quoted  by  Poulain  in  The 
Graces  oj  Interior  Prayer. 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


183 


with  just  the  same  simplicity  of  faith  as  the  pilgrim  at 
Lourdes.  Then,  and  only  then,  will  the  miracles  of 
Lourdes  be  possible  for  him. 

We  must,  however,  be  on  our  guard  against  the 
danger  of  taking  for  granted  the  assumption  that  the 
ideals  of  religion  and  of  a  healthy-minded  system  of 
autosuggestion,  such  as  New  Thought,  are  the  same.  If 
the  ideal  of  religion  were  primarily  to  implant  in  its  fol¬ 
lowers  thoughts  of  health,  happiness  and  beauty,  so  that 
they  might  be  realised  as  beneficent  autosuggestions,  it 
is  certain  that  existing  religious  systems  do  not  succeed 
in  that  object  very  well.  Thoughts  of  disease,  failure 
and  ugliness  are  dwelt  on  in  religious  devotion,  although 
these  are  the  thoughts  which  must  be  most  sternly  dis¬ 
couraged  by  a  healthy-minded  system  of  autosugges¬ 
tion.  Such  a  system  could  find  nothing  of  value  to  it  in 
the  Christian  hymns  on  the  Passion,  or  in  such  a  devo¬ 
tion  as  the  Stations  of  the  Cross.  It  does  not  seem  nec¬ 
essary  to  suppose  that,  in  retaining  these  elements,  his¬ 
torical  Christianity  has  merely  made  a  vast  blunder  in 
mental  therapeutics.  Whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  it 
has  not  considered  that  mental  therapy  was  its  principal 
aim.  It  has  supposed  that  in  thoughts  of  pain  and 
disease,  it  is  drawing  on  a  source  of  spiritual  enrichment 
compared  with  which  the  health  and  happiness  drawn 
from  the  shallow  optimism  of  healthy-minded  thinking 
is  a  trivial  and  a  worthless  thing. 

These  considerations  lead  us  naturally  on  to  enquire 
whether  there  are  any  difficulties  or  dangers  in  auto¬ 
suggestion  or  in  the  methods  of  prayer  which  are  most 
closely  allied  to  it.  The  gravest  medical  objection 
against  a  cure  by  any  kind  of  suggestion  is  that  it  is  often 
merely  a  removal  of  a  symptom  while  the  underlying 
cause  of  the  symptom  remains  untouched.  We  are  not, 


184 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


however,  particularly  concerned  with  this,  since  we  are 
not  discussing  autosuggestion  as  a  method  of  curing 
diseases.  There  remain  two  criticisms  which  touch  us 
more  closely. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  generally  admitted  fact  that 
the  practice  of  autosuggestion  increases  the  suggestibil¬ 
ity  of  the  person  practising  it.  This,  as  has  been  pointed 
out  earlier,  is  an  objection  to  the  use  of  suggestion  in 
any  form.  Baudouin,  however,  distinguishes  in  hetero¬ 
suggestion  between  acceptivity,  the  ease  with  which  a 
suggestion  is  received  from  another  person,  and  sugges¬ 
tibility,  the  capacity  of  a  person  for  realising  an  idea 
whatever  has  been  its  origin.  He  states  that  acceptivity 
is  an  undesirable  factor,  but  that  without  an  exag¬ 
gerated  acceptivity,  a  high  degree  of  suggestibility  is  a 
source  of  strength  and  is  to  be  desired.  It  is,  of  course, 
suggestibility  in  this  restricted  sense  and  not  acceptivity 
that  is  brought  into  play  in  autosuggestion.  Now  it  will 
hardly  be  denied  that  autosuggestion  is  free  from  the 
grave  defect  in  the  use  of  heterosuggestion,  that  the 
subject’s  independence  of  character  is  destroyed  by  the 
increased  ease  with  which  he  receives  suggestions  from 
another  person.  But  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that 
suggestibility,  even  in  Baudouin’s  restricted  sense,  is 
not  a  dangerous  element  in  character  if  it  is  over-devel¬ 
oped.  It  has  been  argued  that  such  over-development 
of  suggestibility  by  a  prolonged  use  of  autosuggestion, 
may  lead  to  mental  dissociation,  which  is  a  condition 
characterising  a  certain  class  of  mental  disorders.  Al¬ 
though  this  cannot  be  regarded  as  definitely  proved,  it  is 
at  least  a  possibility  which  must  be  considered  seriously. 
In  addition  to  this,  it  is  clear  that  an  over-developed 
suggestibility  would  expose  us  dangerously  to  the  action 
of  noxious  spontaneous  autosuggestions.  The  advo- 


WORSHIP  AND  PRAYER 


185 


cates  of  autosuggestion  reply  that  that  does  not  matter 
since  these  can  then  be  adequately  dealt  with  by  reflec¬ 
tive  autosuggestion.  But  we  may  still  doubt  whether  it 
is  wise  to  throw  away  our  protective  armour,  because 
we  are  confident  that  our  use  of  the  sword  is  sufficiently 
expert  to  enable  us  to  parry  any  blow  that  may  be  aimed 
at  us. 

This,  however,  is  only  a  particular  aspect  of  a  charge 
made  against  autosuggestion,  that  it  is  essentially  an 
infantile  mode  of  behaviour.  Its  abandonment  of  vol¬ 
untary  effort,  its  cultivation  of  what  Baudouin  calls  the 
imagination  as  opposed  to  the  will,  is  stated  to  be  an 
abandonment  of  a  grown-up  way  of  dealing  with  diffi¬ 
culties  in  favour  of  a  childish  one.  This  criticism  is 
made  sometimes  by  psychologists  who  regard  the  com¬ 
plete  control  of  conduct  by  the  rational  forces  of  the 
conscious  will  as  the  proper  condition  of  the  mind  of  a 
grown  person,  and  look  upon  irrational  and  instinctive 
mental  elements  as  things  which  ought  to  have  been 
superseded.  To  them  any  effort  to  direct  these  irra¬ 
tional  forces  otherwise  than  by  consciously  and  delib¬ 
erately  overruling  them  is  objectionable,  so  necessarily 
they  condemn  autosuggestion  in  any  form,  and  they 
disapprove  of  any  mental  exercise  which  has  not  as  its 
object  the  strengthening  of  the  conscious  will.  This, 
however,  is  a  view  of  the  constitution  of  mind,  which  is 
not  now  generally  accepted  by  psychologists.  We  look 
upon  such  irrational  forces  as  necessary  elements  of 
mind  which  must  be  understood  and  controlled,  but 
which  cannot  be  got  rid  of.  However,  we  call  this  part 
of  the  mind  the  infantile  psyche,  and  recognise  the 
undesirability  of  its  being  unduly  developed.  Auto¬ 
suggestion  and  mental  exercises  akin  to  it  are  dangerous 
if  they  over-develop  the  infantile  forces  of  mind.  The 


186  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


charge  of  the  orthodox  mystical  writers  against  the 
Quietists  was,  whether  justly  or  not,  that  they  were 
over-developing  this  side  of  the  mind.  Clearly,  the 
abandonment  of  effort  is  a  dangerous  formula  if  it  is 
taken  as  a  complete  guide  to  life.  It  may  be  im¬ 
portant  to  know  when  to  abandon  voluntary  effort, 
but  it  is  surely  even  more  important  for  effective  action 
of  any  kind  to  know  when  voluntary  effort  is  required. 
We  saw  that  the  Spiritual  Exercises  were,  like  auto¬ 
suggestion,  an  education  of  the  subconscious;  but  they 
were  also  an  education  of  the  function  of  conscious 
conation,  wdiich  is  called  the  will.  The  encouragement 
of  infantility  is  the  danger  which  every  kind  of  mental 
self -development  must  avoid. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


CONVERSION 

Dr  G.  S.  Hall  has  pointed  out  the  close  connection 
between  conversion  and  adolescence,  and  this  connec¬ 
tion  has  been  fully  illustrated  in  Starbuck’s  well-known 
work,  The  Psychology  of  Religion.  These  authors  point 
out  that  the  majority  of  conversions  take  place  between 
the  ages  of  twelve  and  twenty-five.  They,  therefore, 
connect  the  conversion  change  with  the  physiological 
and  psychological  changes  taking  place  at  that  time. 
While  the  recognition  and  study  of  this  fact  have 
marked  an  important  advance  in  the  psychological 
study  of  conversion,  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  most 
writers  on  the  psychology  of  religion  have  been  so  capti¬ 
vated  by  the  simplicity  of  the  formula  Conversion  is  an 
adolescent  phenomenon,  that  they  have  often  fallen 
into  the  error  of  supposing  that  this  is  all  that  is  to  be 
said  about  religious  conversion  from  the  psychologist’s 
point  of  view.  Their  omission  to  consider  conversions 
which  do  not  fall  under  this  formula  is  rendered  serious 
by  the  fact  that  these  exceptions  have  often  been  the 
most  important  religious  conversions  in  history.  A 
large  number  of  great  religious  leaders  have  been  con¬ 
verted  late  in  life;  St  Paul,  St  Augustine  and  Tolstoy 
are  well-known  examples.  It  appears  preferable,  there¬ 
fore,  to  treat  adult  and  adolescent  conversions  as  two 
separate  problems,  and  to  see  how  far  the  explanations 
found  for  one  will  fit  the  other  and  how  far  they  require 
different  treatment. 

Using  the  word  conversion  in  a  wide  and  vague  sense, 

187 


188  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


we  may  say  that  it  is  an  outbreak  into  consciousness  of 
something,  such  as  a  system  of  beliefs,  which  seems  to 
have  had  no  period  of  development  in  the  mind. 
Modern  psychology,  on  its  pathological  side,  has  been 
interested  in  other  cases  of  apparent  irruptions  into 
consciousness  of  material  which  seems  to  have  no  con¬ 
tinuity  with  what  has  previously  been  in  the  mind,  and 
therefore  appears  to  come  into  the  mind  from  outside. 
These  are  commonly  explained  as  due  to  the  influence 
on  consciousness  of  instincts  or  of  sentiments  with  a 
strong  emotional  tone  which  have  been  repressed  from 
the  conscious  mind,  and  have  become  unconscious. 
These  unconscious  mental  dispositions  are  now  com¬ 
monly  called  complexes.  The  motive  of  the  repression 
may  be  that  the  material  concerned  is  painful,  immoral 
or  otherwise  displeasing  to  the  normal  consciousness. 
The  repression  may  be  so  complete  that  the  repressed 
matter  becomes  entirely  unknown  to  the  conscious 
mind.  The  force  opposed  to  the  repressed  complex  is 
called  a  resistance.  Though  it  is  lost  to  consciousness, 
such  repressed  material  has  not  necessarily  lost  its 
power;  it  may  influence  feeling  or  conduct  in  some 
unexpected  way.  In  this  case,  the  individual  con¬ 
cerned  will  be  ignorant  of  the  source  of  influence. 

The  struggle  between  a  complex  and  the  opposing 
resistance,  if  both  are  conscious,  will  be  present  to  con¬ 
sciousness  as  a  painful  mental  conflict.  If  the  complex 
is  entirely  unconscious  this  will  not  be  the  case,  but 
there  will  still  be  a  real  conflict,  although  it  is  not  pres¬ 
ent  to  the  conscious  mind.  The  time  may  come  when 
the  development  of  the  complex  has  so  far  advanced 
that  the  resistance  is  no  longer  powerful  enough  to  keep 
it  repressed.  There  is  then  an  outbreak  into  conscious¬ 
ness  of  a  new  mental  construction  which  appears  to 


CONVERSION 


189 


introspection  to  have  had  no  period  of  development  in 
the  mind.  The  system  seems  to  have  come  to  the  mind 
from  outside,  so  its  outbreak  has  an  apparently  super¬ 
natural  character.  This  appearance  of  the  extramental 
origin  of  the  system  may  be  regarded  as  an  illusion  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  process  of  its  incubation  was  un¬ 
conscious. 

Similar  cases  of  unconscious  incubation  of  mental 
constructions  are  familiar  in  ordinary  life  to  everyone 
who  is  sufficiently  introspective  to  have  noticed  them. 
Many  people,  when  worried  by  a  problem  or  by  the 
necessity  of  writing  a  difficult  letter,  have  the  habit  of 
dismissing  it  from  their  minds  and  returning  to  it  later. 
They  then  find  that,  though  they  have  not  thought  of  it 
at  all  during  the  interval,  the  problem  is  solved  or  the 
letter  seems  to  write  itself. 

As  an  example  of  a  consistent  attempt  to  express  the 
conversion  change,  as  a  result  of  the  outbreak  of  a  re¬ 
pressed  complex,  w~e  may  take  a  psychological  discus¬ 
sion  by  Dr  Jung 1  on  the  conversion  of  St  Paul: 

Although  the  moment  of  a  conversion  seems  some¬ 
times  quite  sudden  and  unexpected,  yet  we  know  from 
repeated  experience  that  such  a  fundamental  occur¬ 
rence  always  has  a  long  period  of  unconscious  incuba¬ 
tion.  It  is  only  when  the  preparation  is  complete,  that 
is  to  say,  wdien  the  individual  is  ready  to  be  converted, 
that  the  new  view  breaks  forth  with  great  emotion.  St 
Paul  had  already  been  a  Christian  for  a  long  time,  but 
unconsciously;  hence  his  fanatical  resistance  to  the 
Christians,  because  fanaticism  exists  chiefly  in  indi¬ 
viduals  who  are  compensating  for  secret  doubts.  The 
incident  of  his  hearing  the  voice  of  Christ  on  his  way 
to  Damascus  marks  the  moment  wThen  the  unconscious 

1<(The  Psychological  Foundation  of  Belief  in  Spirits.”  Proc. 
SP.R.  May,  1920. 


190 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


complex  of  Christianity  became  conscious.  That  the 
auditory  phenomenon  should  represent  Christ  is  ex¬ 
plained  by  the  already  existing  unconscious  Christian 
complex.  The  complex,  being  unconscious,  was  pro¬ 
jected  by  St  Paul  on  to  the  external  world  as  if  it 
did  not  belong  to  him.  LTnable  to  conceive  of  himself 
as  a  Christian,  and  on  account  of  his  resistance  to 
Christ,  he  became  blind,  and  could  only  regain  his 
sight  through  submission  to  a  Christian,  that  is  to  say, 
through  his  complete  submission  to  Christianity. 
Psychogenic  blindness  is,  according  to  my  experience, 
always  due  to  an  unwillingness  to  see,  i.e.  to  under¬ 
stand  and  to  accept,  what  is  incompatible  with  the 
conscious  attitude.  This  was  obviously  the  case  with 
St  Paul.  His  unwillingness  to  see  corresponds  with 
his  fanatical  resistance  to  Christianity.  This  resist¬ 
ance  was  never  wholly  extinguished,  a  fact  of  which 
we  have  proof  in  the  epistles.  It  broke  forth  at  times 
in  the  fits  he  suffered  from.  It  is  certainly  a  great  mis¬ 
take  to  call  his  fits  epileptic.  There  is  no  trace  of 
epilepsy  in  them,  on  the  contrary,  St  Paul  himself  in 
his  epistles  gives  hints  enough  as  to  the  real  nature  of 
the  illness.  They  are  clearly  psychogenic  fits,  which 
really  mean  a  return  to  the  old  Saul-complex,  repressed 
through  conversion,  in  the  same  way  as  there  had 
previously  been  a  repression  of  the  complex  of 
Christianity. 

On  this  view,  the  account  of  St  Paul’s  conversion  is  a 
particularly  instructive  one  because  it  shows  the  uncon¬ 
scious  complex  breaking  into  consciousness  as  a  result 
of  its  own  development.  The  actual  outbreak  is  not 
determined  by  an  external  influence,  as  in  the  case  of  a 
person  converted  by  the  hearing  of  a  revival  sermon. 
Moreover,  the  resistance  itself  is  visible  in  its  effects  on 
his  conduct  (in  his  persecution  of  the  Christians). 
Acceptance  of  this  as  a  sufficient  account  of  the  psycho- 


CONVERSION 


191 


logical  mechanism  of  his  conversion  does  not,  of  course, 
prevent  us  from  holding,  if  we  have  reason  to  do  so,  that 
there  was  an  objective  ground  of  St  Paul’s  visions. 
Psychologically,  it  would  not  be  a  necessary  postulate, 
but  it  is  arguable  that  it  might  be  necessary  on  other 
grounds. 

Before  discussing  adult  conversion  in  detail,  it  is 
necessary  to  make  a  distinction  between  two  classes  of 
adult  conversion,  which  clearly  have  their  roots  in 
entirely  different  mental  processes.  These  are:  ordi¬ 
nary  conversion  (from  an  irreligious  to  a  religious  life) 
and  what  is  generally  called  mystical  conversion  (from 
an  ordinary  religious  life  to  the  life  of  a  mystic).  It  is 
with  ordinary  adult  conversion  that  we  are  concerned  at 
present,  and  for  the  psychological  mechanism  of  this,  I 
am  of  the  opinion  that  Dr  Jung’s  explanation  is  sub¬ 
stantially  correct.  We  seem  to  be  able  to  give  an  ade¬ 
quate  account  of  this  by  assuming  the  presence  of  a 
growing  sentiment,  kept  unconscious  by  a  resistance, 
which  finally  overthrows  that  resistance  and  establishes 
itself  in  a  dominant  position  in  the  conscious  life. 

We  notice,  however,  that  in  ordinary  conversion  itself 
there  is  considerable  variation  in  the  nature  of  the  re¬ 
sistance  and  the  impulse  which  it  is  opposing.  We  may 
conveniently  classify  these  differences  by  saying  that 
the  conflict  may  be  mainly  moral,  mainly  intellectual 
or  mainly  social.  By  a  social  conflict  I  mean  one  in 
which  the  contending  interests  are  loyalties  to  two 
mutually  opposed  communities.  It  is  likely  that  all 
three  of  these  elements  enter  into  every  conversion,  but 
it  is  possible  to  make  a  rough  distinction  into  classes  in 
which  one  or  other  of  them  is  dominant. 

The  first  class,  in  which  the  conflict  is  moral,  is  the 
most  familiar,  since  most  of  the  reported  conversions  of 
revival  preachers  are  of  this  type.  The  repressed  com- 


192  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

plex  may  be  a  desire  to  escape  from  excessive  drinking 
or  from  sexual  indulgence,  or  from  any  other  kind  of 
behaviour  which  is  regarded  as  sinful.  The  interest 
behind  the  complex  may  be  genuinely  religious  in  char¬ 
acter — a  desire  to  be  “right  with  God.”  This  interest  is 
often,  however,  supplemented  or  replaced  by  others — by 
a  wish  for  the  approval  of  other  people  or  of  one’s  self, 
by  a  fear  of  the  consequences  of  continued  indulgence, 
etc.1  This  is  recognised  by  the  revival  preacher  who,  in 
addition  to  the  purely  religious  appeal,  eloquently  de¬ 
scribes  the  horrors  of  a  drunkard’s  end  or  the  pains  of 
hell.  Thus,  Jonathan  Edwards  says: 

There  will  be  no  end  to  the  exquisite,  horrible  misery. 
The  inhabitants  of  heaven  and  all  the  universe  will 
look  on  and  praise  God’s  justice.  No  prayer  will  miti¬ 
gate  God’s  hate  and  contempt,  for  He  can  no  longer 
pity.  You  would  have  gone  to  hell  last  night  had 
he  not  held  you  like  a  loathsome  spider  over  the  flames 
by  a  thread.2 

We  will  take  two  examples  of  the  moral  conversion. 
Both  are  given  in  a  book  called  Stories  oj  Grace,  by  the 
Rev.  C.  S.  Isaacson. 

The  first  took  place  after  a  sermon  preached  in  a 
small  church  in  Basingstoke: 

Amongst  the  crowd  in  the  centre  of  the  aisle  there 
stood  a  man  so  noted  for  his  ungodliness  and  profane 
language  as  to  be  known  in  Basingstoke  by  the  name 
of  “Swearing  Tom.”  He  was  a  leader  in  sin  and  pro¬ 
fanity,  and  for  seventeen  years  he  had  never  entered 

Ht  must  be  added  that  one  of  these  interests  may  be  of  in¬ 
stinctive  origin.  Even  when  discussing  sexual  indulgence,  it  is 
necessary  to  insist  on  the  falsity  of  a  manner  of  talking  about  it 
which  assumes  that  unlimited  indulgence  is  natural,  while  restraint 
is  always  a  work  of  grace.  Excessive  sexual  indulgence  is  as  truly 
a  violation  of  an  instinct  as  is  absolute  continence. 

2  “Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry  God.”  Works,  1807,  vn. 
p.  486. 


CONVERSION 


193 


a  church.  It  was  only  curiosity  which  brought  him 
now.  The  text  was  taken  from  the  prophecy  of  Eze¬ 
kiel,  “I  will  put  a  new  spirit  within  you.”  Towards 
the  close  of  the  sermon  the  preacher  quoted  the 
words,  “If  ye  then,  being  evil,  know  how  to  give  good 
gifts  unto  your  children,  how  much  more  shall  your 
heavenly  Father  give  the  Holy  Spirit  to  them  that 
ask  Him?”  (Luke  xi.  13),  remarking  that,  contrary 
to  the  conclusion  which  might  have  been  expected, 
“the  offer  was  not  to  children,  but  simply  to  those 
who  asked.  There  was  nothing,  therefore,  between 
the  worst  of  men  and  this  most  blessed  gift  from 
heaven  but  to  ask  for  it.”  He  then  added,  “If  the  most 
wicked  man  in  this  church  would  go  home  and  pray 
that  God,  for  Christ’s  sake,  would  give  him  His  Holy 
Spirit  to  change  his  heart,  God  would  hear  and  answer 
that  man’s  prayer.” 

These  words  went  straight  to  the  heart  of  “Swear¬ 
ing  Tom.”  “I  am  the  worst  man  here,”  he  said  to 
himself;  “I  will  go  home  and  pray.”  As  he  went  he 
had  to  pass  by  the  familiar  public-house,  but,  un¬ 
moved  by  the  calls  of  his  companions,  he  refused  to 
turn  in.  On  reaching  his  home  he  threw  himself  on 
his  knees,  and  tried  to  pray  in  the  words  which  he 
had  heard  from  the  pulpit.  The  prayer  wTas  answered. 
From  that  time  he  became  a  changed  man,  and  his 
name  of  “Swearing  Tom”  was  soon  altered  to  that 
of  “Praying  Tom,”  by  which  he  w^as  known  till  the 
day  of  his  death.1 

The  next  account  is  that  given  of  himself  by  Mr 
Brownlow  North,  who  became,  after  his  conversion,  a 
revival  preacher.  He  was  of  noble  birth,  and  up  to  the 
age  of  forty-five  he  led  a  gay  life  in  Aberdeen. 

It  pleased  God,  in  the  month  of  November,  1854, 
one  night,  when  I  was  sitting  playing  at  cards,  to  make 
1  Stories  of  Grace ,  by  the  Rev.  C.  S.  Isaacson,  pp.  129,  130. 


194 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


me  concerned  about  my  soul.  The  instrument  used 
was  a  sensation  of  sudden  illness,  which  led  me  to 
think  that  I  was  going  to  die.  I  said  to  my  son,  “I 
am  a  dead  man;  take  me  upstairs.”  As  soon  as  this 
was  done,  I  threw  myself  down  on  the  bed.  My  first 
thought  was  then,  “Now,  what  will  my  forty-four  years 
of  following  the  devices  of  my  own  heart  profit  me? 
In  a  few  minutes  I  shall  be  in  hell,  and  what  good 
wdll  all  these  things  do  me  for  which  I  have  sold  my 
soul?”  At  that  moment  I  felt  constrained  to  pray,  but 
it  was  merely  the  prayer  of  a  coward,  a  cry  for  mercy. 

I  was  not  sorry  for  what  I  had  done,  but  I  was  afraid 
of  the  punishment  of  my  sin.  And  yet  there  was 
something  trying  to  prevent  me  putting  myself  on 
my  knees  to  call  for  mercy,  and  that  was  the  presence 
of  the  maidservant  in  the  room  lighting  the  fire. 
Though  I  did  not  believe  at  that  time  that  I  had  ten 
minutes  to  live,  and  knew  that  there  was  no  possible 
hope  for  me  but  in  the  mercy  of  God,  and  that  if  I 
did  not  seek  that  mercy  I  could  not  expect  to  have 
it,  yet  such  was  the  nature  of  my  heart,  and  of  my 
spirit  within  me,  that  it  was  a  balance  with  me,  a 
thing  to  turn  this  way  or  that,  I  could  not  tell  how, 
whether  I  should  wait  till  that  woman  left  the  room, 
or  whether  I  should  fall  on  my  knees  and  call  for 
mercy  in  her  presence. 

By  the  grace  of  God  I  did  put  myself  on  my  knees 
before  that  girl,  and  I  believe  it  was  the  turning  point 
with  me. 

This  incident  started  a  long  and  distressing  mental 
conflict  which  ended  one  night  when  he  was  reading  and 
came  to  the  passage:  “But  now  the  righteousness  of 
God  without  the  law  is  manifested,  being  witnessed  by 
the  law  and  the  prophets ;  even  the  righteousness  of  God 
which  is  by  faith  of  Jesus  Christ  unto  all  and  upon  all 
them  that  believe.” 


CONVERSION 


195 


With  that  passage  light  came  into  my  soul.  Striking 
the  book  with  my  hand  and  springing  from  my  chair, 
I  cried,  “If  that  Scripture  is  true,  I  am  a  saved  man! 
That  is  what  I  want;  that  is  what  God  offers  me;  that 
is  what  I  will  have.”  God  helping  me,  it  was  that  I 
took:  the  righteousness  of  God  without  the  law.  It 
was  my  only  hope.1 

We  may  here  notice,  in  passing,  the  precautions  neces¬ 
sary  in  dealing  with  the  material  provided  for  the  study 
of  conversion  by  such  narratives  as  those  which  have 
just  been  given. 

There  is,  in  the  first  place,  an  unavoidable  tendency 
towards  unconscious  falsification  on  the  part  of  the 
narrators.  Experiences  recorded  later  in  life  than  the 
time  of  their  occurrence  will  be  conventionalised  in  ac¬ 
cordance  with  the  point  of  view  of  the  narrator  at  the 
time  they  are  recorded.  Features  not  in  harmony  with 
the  usual  accounts  of  conversions  in  the  convert’s  com¬ 
munity  will  tend  to  be  softened  out.  Childish  experi¬ 
ences  are  often  described  in  language  which  obviously 
belongs  to  a  later  age.  Particularly  must  we  suspect 
accounts  which  are  obviously  written  for  the  sake  of 
edification,  since  in  these  the  process  of  conventionalisa¬ 
tion  is  certain  to  have  crept  in,  however  little  the  nar¬ 
rator  may  suspect  it. 

At  the  same  time,  we  must  notice  an  incompleteness 
in  the  narratives  themselves.  The  data  given  are  not  all 
that  the  psychological  enquirer  would  need  for  an  ade¬ 
quate  investigation  into  the  phenomena  received.  If 
we  accept  the  conclusions  of  modern  psychology,  the 
love-interests  of  the  person  concerned  are  of  vital  im¬ 
portance  in  the  determination  of  all  the  events  of  his 

1  Op.  cit.  pp.  18-20,  quoting  from  Records  and  Recollections, 
Brownlow  North. 


196  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

mental  life.  Generally,  in  the  story  of  a  conversion, 
they  are  omitted  or  given  in  an  incomplete  form.  It  is 
rarely  that  we  have  a  case  like  that  of  St  Augustine 
where  the  sexual  history  of  the  convert  is  given  without 
reserve.  An  obvious  case  of  incomplete  data  is  found  in 
the  second  of  the  narratives  already  given.  Why  wTas 
the  subject  so  powerfully  affected  by  the  phrase  “with¬ 
out  the  lawT”?  The  account  gives  no  indication.  It 
seems  clear  that  it  is  connected  with  the  getting  rid  of 
some  moral  conflict — with  its  evasion,  or  perhaps  with 
the  perception  that  it  was  unreal. 

A  third  point  of  importance  in  this  connection  is  the 
fact  that,  if  the  psychological  point  of  view  we  are 
adopting  be  correct,  then  some  of  the  most  important 
determinants  of  conversion  will  not  be  apparent  to  in¬ 
trospection  since  they  will  be  unconscious.  For  exam¬ 
ple,  the  psychologist  will  not  find  it  easy  to  accept 
Swearing  Tom’s  statement  that  he  was  drawm  to  church 
merely  by  curiosity.  He  will  rather  be  inclined  to  sus¬ 
pect  that  this  conduct  was  the  result  of  the  already 
working  religious  complex,  but  that, it  was  rationalised 
in  this  way  because,  since  the  complex  was  repressed, 
this  motive  was  unconscious.  Similarly,  the  religious 
background  of  Brownlow  North’s  conflict  when  he 
thought  that  he  was  dying  is  curiously  traditional.  The 
genuinely  irreligious  man  does  not  talk  or  think  like 
that.  The  traditional  religious  dispositions  implanted 
by  his  childhood  teaching  have  survived  in  his  uncon¬ 
scious  and  probably  play  a  considerable  part  in  the 
direction  of  his  conversion  change. 

Predominantly  intellectual  conversions  present  more 
difficulties  than  the  type  we  have  just  considered.  The 
intellectual  conflict  seems  always  to  be  mixed  up  with 
moral  elements,  and  it  is  difficult  to  tell  how  far  it  is  real 


CONVERSION 


197 


and  how  far  it  is  merely  a  rationalisation  of  a  moral 
conflict.  That  a  moral  conflict  may  appear  disguised  as 
an  intellectual  one  is  no  new  discovery  of  modern  psy¬ 
chology.  Clergymen  are  quite  familiar  with  the  fact 
that  the  doubts  of  members  of  their  congregations  are 
often  intimately  connected  with  moral  shortcomings  in 
their  lives. 

St  Augustine  may  be  taken  as  an  example  of  a  con¬ 
version  of  the  intellectual  type.  Of  his  thirtieth  year, 
he  writes  in  his  Conjessions : 

But  me  for  the  most  part  the  habit  of  satisfying  an 
insatiable  appetite  tormented,  while  it  held  me  captive. 

.  .  .  So  were  we,  until  Thou,  0  most  High,  not  forsak¬ 
ing  our  dust,  commiserating  us  miserable,  didst  come 
to  our  help,  by  wondrous  and  secret  ways. 

Continual  efforts  were  made  to  have  me  married.  I 
wooed,  I  was  promised,  chiefly  through  my  mother’s 
pains,  that  so  once  married,  the  health-giving  baptism 
might  cleanse  me,  towards  which  she  rejoiced  that  I 
was  being  daily  fitted.  .  .  .  Meanwhile  my  sins  were 
being  multiplied,  and  my  concubine  being  torn  from 
my  side  as  a  hindrance  to  my  marriage,  my  heart  which 
clave  unto  her  was  torn  and  wounded  and  bleeding. 
.  .  .  But  unhappy,  I,  .  .  .  impatient  of  delay,  inas¬ 
much  as  not  till  after  two  years  was  I  to  obtain  her 
I  sought,  not  being  so  much  a  lover  of  marriage 
as  a  slave  to  lust,  procured  another,  though  no 
wife.  .  .  .  To  Thee  be  praise,  glory  to  Thee,  Fountain 
of  Mercies.  I  was  becoming  more  miserable,  and  Thou 
nearer. 

In  Book  VII,  he  describes  his  intellectual  difficulties. 
He  thought  of  God  as  extended  in  space,  though  filling 
all  things.  He  was  unable  to  understand  the  cause  of 
evil.  He  knew  that  free-will  was  supposed  to  be  the 


198  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

cause  of  evil,  but  he  did  not  find  in  this  a  solution  of  his 
difficulties. 

For  He  should  not  be  All-mighty,  if  He  might  not 
create  something  good  without  the  aid  of  that  matter 
which  Himself  had  not  created.  These  thoughts  I  re¬ 
volved  in  my  miserable  heart,  overcharged  with  gnaw¬ 
ing  cares,  lest  I  should  die  ere  I  had  found  the  truth; 
yet  was  the  faith  of  Thy  Christ,  our  Lord  and  Saviour, 
professed  in  the  Church  Catholic,  firmly  fixed  in  my 
heart,  in  many  points,  indeed,  as  yet  unformed  and 
fluctuating  from  the  rule  of  doctrine;  yet  did  not  my 
mind  utterly  leave  it,  but  rather  daily  took  in  more 
and  more  of  it. 

By  a  study  of  Scripture,  he  came  to  have  what  he  con¬ 
sidered  a  right  view  of  all  these  questions,  and  saw  that 
iniquity  was  the  perversion  of  the  will.  Though  accept¬ 
ing  Jesus  Christ  as  the  Mediator  between  God  and  Man, 
he  says  that  he  did  not  understand  the  true  doctrine  of 
the  Incarnation,  not  understanding  how  that  saying, 
“The  Word  was  made  flesh,”  distinguishes  the  Catholic 
faith  from  the  heresy  of  Apollinarius,  who  taught  that 
Christ  had  no  human  mind.  These  difficulties  vanished 
away  when  he  studied  the  writings  of  St  Paul. 

He  now  accepted  the  orthodox  faith.  “But/’  he  says, 
“for  my  temporal  life,  all  was  wavering,  and  my  heart 
had  to  he  purged  jrom  the  old  leaven.  The  Way,  the 
Saviour  Himself,  well  pleased  me,  but  as  yet  I  shrunk 
from  going  through  its  straitness.”  When  told  of  the 
conversion  of  Victorinus,  Rhetoric  Professor  at  Rome, 
Augustine  was  on  fire  to  imitate  him,  but  found  in  him¬ 
self  two  wills,  the  one  spiritual,  the  other  carnal.  These 
struggled  within  him,  until  God  delivered  him  out  of  the 
bonds  of  desire,  wherewith  he  was  bound  most  straitly 
to  carnal  concupiscence,  and  out  of  the  drudgery  of 
worldly  things.  He  was  afterwards  much  impressed  by 


CONVERSION 


199 


the  story  of  St  Antony  and  of  the  conversion  of  two 
courtiers,  told  him  by  a  Christian  called  Pontianus. 

Then  he  seemed  to  see  howT  foul  he  was,  “how  crooked 
and  defiled,  bespotted  and  ulcerous.” 

What  ails  us?  What  heardest  thou?  The  unlearned 
start  up  and  take  heaven  by  force,  and  we  with  our 
learning,  and  without  heart,  lo,  where  we  wallow  in 
flesh  and  blood!  Are  we  ashamed  to  follow,  because 
others  are  gone  before,  and  not  ashamed  not  even  to 
follow? 

The  tumult  of  his  inward  contention  hurried  him  to 
the  garden  of  his  lodging,  where  he  would  be  free  from 
any  fear  of  interruption.  He  gives  a  graphic  account  of 
the  conflict  which  took  place  here  between  his  religious 
and  moral  complex  and  the  resistance  opposing  it. 

Thus  soul-sick  was  I,  and  tormented,  accusing  myself 
much  more  severely  than  was  my  wont,  rolling  and 
turning  me  in  my  chain,  till  that  were  wholly  broken, 
whereby  I  now  was  but  just,  but  still  was,  held.  .  .  . 
The  very  toys  of  toys,  and  vanities  of  vanities,  my 
ancient  mistresses,  still  held  me;  they  plucked  my 
fleshly  garment,  and  whispered  softly,  “Dost  thou  cast 
us  off?”  .  .  .  But  now  it  spake  very  faintly.  For  on 
that  side  wdiither  I  had  set  my  face,  and  whither  I 
trembled  to  go,  there  appeared  unto  me  the  chaste 
dignity  of  Continence,  serene,  yet  not  relaxedly,  gay, 
honestly  alluring  me  to  come,  and  doubt  not;  and 
stretching  forth  to  receive  and  embrace  me,  her  holy 
hands  full  of  multitudes  of  good  examples.  ...  I  sent 
up  these  sorrowfful  words:  How  long,  how  long,  “to¬ 
morrow  and  to-morrow”?  Why  not  now?  Why  not 
this  hour  make  an  end  to  my  uncleanness? 

While  he  was  speaking  and  weeping  in  bitter  contri¬ 
tion,  he  heard  a  child  chanting,  “Take  up  and  read; 
take  up  and  read.”  This  he  took  as  a  command  from 


200  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

God,  and  opening  the  book  by  chance,  his  eyes  fell  on 
the  passage:  Not  in  rioting  and  drunkenness,  not  in 
chambering  and  wantonness,  not  in  strife  and  envying ; 
but  put  ye  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  make  not 
provision  for  the  flesh  in  concupiscence. 

No  further  would  I  read;  nor  needed  I:  for  instantly 
at  the  end  of  this  sentence,  by  a  light  as  it  were  of 
serenity  infused  into  my  heart,  all  the  darkness  of 
doubt  vanished  away.  ...  For  Thou  convertedst  me 
unto  Thyself,  so  that  I  sought  neither  wife,  nor  any 
hope  in  this  world. 

Of  his  state  after  conversion,  he  says:  “This  Thy 
whole  gift  was,  to  nill  what  I  willed,  and  to  will  what 
Thou  willedst.” 

The  intellectual  power  of  St  Augustine,  the  intro¬ 
spective  ability  shown  in  his  description  of  the  conflict 
after  it  has  become  conscious,  and  the  frankness  with 
which  he  describes  his  sexual  conflict,  combine  to  make 
this  an  invaluable  conversion  record.  It  also  illustrates 
the  difficulty  of  distinguishing  between  the  moral  and 
intellectual  parts  of  the  conflict.  St  Augustine’s  diffi¬ 
culties  about  the  nature  of  sin  are  clearly  an  expression 
of  the  conflict  between  his  own  moral  ideals  and  his 
course  of  life.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  his  intel¬ 
lectual  problems  were  solved  first,  and  that  it  was  the 
moral  conflict  alone  which  was  active  during  the  mental 
struggle  in  the  garden.  At  this  time  the  choice  had  been 
made  in  the  unconscious,  and  the  moral  and  religious 
complex  needed  only  the  slightest  additional  stimula¬ 
tion  to  burst  into  consciousness.  This  additional  stimu¬ 
lation  was  provided  by  the  voice  of  the  child  and  the 
verse  of  Scripture  he  read. 

Yet  we  cannot  dismiss  the  intellectual  conflict  as  a 


CONVERSION 


201 


mere  rationalisation  of  the  moral  one.  St  Augustine’s 
position  as  a  teacher  of  philosophy  makes  it  clear  that 
his  mind  was  of  the  intellectual  type.  It  is  important  to 
recognise  the  part  played  by  purely  emotional  disposi¬ 
tions  in  determining  belief  and  conduct  ;  at  the  same 
time,  we  must  not  forget  that  intellectual  processes  also 
play  a  part  in  determining  belief  and  conduct,  and  that 
this  part  will  be  larger  in  minds  with  an  intellectual 
disposition  and  training. 

It  is  difficult,  however,  to  find  any  clear  case  of  a 
purely  intellectual  conversion  in  real  life.  There  is 
indeed  in  fiction  the  conversion  of  Robert  Elsmere  in 
Mrs  Humphry  Ward’s  novel.  But  the  soundness  of 
the  psychology  of  this  account  may  be  doubted. 

The  third  kind  of  adult  conversion  which  we  distin¬ 
guished  was  that  in  which  the  main  part  of  the  conflict 
appears  to  be  between  opposing  loyalties.  These  we 
called  social  conversions.  They  will  naturally  be  found 
most  commonly  as  conversions  from  systems  wffiich 
make  such  demands  upon  the  loyalties  of  their  members 
that  a  breach  with  the  system  involves  a  complete 
breach  with  its  other  members — a  tearing  apart  of  the 
bonds  between  the  individual  concerned  and  all  the  in¬ 
dividuals  with  whom  he  has  intimate  personal  relation¬ 
ships.  Most  religious  bodies  in  the  modern  civilised 
world  do  not  make  their  demand  upon  the  loyalties  of 
their  members  in  such  an  extreme  form,  so  amongst 
these  bodies  we  cannot  expect  to  find  many  conversions 
of  this  type.  They  are  found,  however,  in  religious 
bodies  and  amongst  races  whose  community  feeling  is 
stronger. 

St  Paul  has  already  been  quoted  as  a  conversion  of 
this  type.  As  another  example  we  may  take  a  living 
Christian  convert  from  Hinduism — the  Sadhu  Sundar 


202 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


Singh.  The  following  is  an  account  of  this  event  in  his 
own  wTords: 

When  I  wTas  out  in  any  towrn  I  got  people  to  throw 
stones  at  Christian  preachers.  I  would  tear  up  the 
Bible  and  burn  it  when  I  had  a  chance.  In  the  presence 
of  my  father  I  cut  up  the  Bible  and  other  Christian 
books  and  put  kerosene  oil  upon  them  and  burnt  them. 
I  thought  this  was  a  false  religion  and  tried  all  I  could 
to  destroy  it.  I  was  faithful  to  my  own  religion,  but  I 
could  not  get  any  satisfaction  or  peace,  though  I  per¬ 
formed  all  the  ceremonies  and  rites  of  that  religion.  So 
I  thought  of  leaving  it  all  and  committing  suicide. 
Three  days  after  I  had  burnt  the  Bible,  I  woke  up 
about  three  o’clock  in  the  morning,  had  my  usual 
bath,  and  prayed,  “0  God,  if  there  is  a  God,  wilt  thou 
show  me  the  right  way  or  I  will  kill  myself.”  My  in¬ 
tention  was  that,  if  I  got  no  satisfaction,  I  would  place 
my  head  upon  the  railway  line  when  the  5  o’clock  train 
passed  by  and  kill  myself.  If  I  got  no  satisfaction  in 
this  life,  I  thought  I  would  get  it  in  the  next.  I  was 
praying  and  praying  but  got  no  answer;  and  I  prayed 
for  half-an-hour  longer  hoping  to  get  peace.  At  4.30 
a.m.  I  saw  something  of  which  I  had  no  idea  at  all 
previously.  In  the  room  where  I  was  praying  I  saw 
a  great  light.  I  thought  the  place  was  on  fire.  I 
looked  round,  but  could  find  nothing.  Then  the 
thought  came  to  me,  “Jesus  Christ  is  not  dead  but  liv¬ 
ing  and  it  must  be  He  Himself.”  So  I  fell  at  His  feet 
and  got  this  wonderful  Peace  which  I  could  not  get 
anywhere  else.  This  is  the  joy  I  was  wishing  to  get. 
This  was  heaven  itself.  When  I  got  up,  the  vision 
had  all  disappeared;  but  although  the  vision  disap¬ 
peared  the  Peace  and  Joy  have  remained  with  me  ever 
since.  I  went  off  and  told  my  Father  that  I  had 
become  a  Christian.1 

1  The  Sadhu.  Streeter  and  Appasamy,  pp.  5-7. 


CONVERSION 


203 


Like  the  conversion  of  St  Paul,  this  story  seems  to  be 
satisfactorily  explained  on  the  assumption  that  Chris¬ 
tianity  had  already  been  accepted  in  the  unconscious, 
while  the  affection  for  his  parents  and  all  the  other 
social  forces  of  his  surroundings  were  opposing  a  resist¬ 
ance  to  the  entrance  of  this  conviction  into  conscious¬ 
ness.  The  resistance  expressed  itself  as  a  violent  con¬ 
scious  hatred  of  Christianity,  and  the  conflict  between 
his  repressed  conviction  and  the  opposing  resistance 
produced  such  a  painful  state  of  mind  that  he  wished  to 
end  it  by  suicide. 

This  theory  of  conversion  is  essentially  the  same  as 
William  James's  theory  of  subconscious  incubation. 
The  difference,  however,  is  important.  Modern  mental 
pathology  has  taught  us  a  great  deal  more  than  was 
known  in  the  days  of  James  about  the  mechanism  by 
which  complexes  are  kept  unconscious.  Repression  has 
been  studied  in  a  great  variety  of  cases,  both  wdiere  it 
has  become  pathogenic  and  wdiere  the  subject  has  re¬ 
mained  healthy.  The  theory  of  subconscious  incuba¬ 
tion  is  no  longer  a  hypothesis  introduced  to  explain  the 
peculiarities  of  this  one  phenomenon  of  religious  con¬ 
version.  It  is  a  process  familiar  in  a  number  of  different 
conditions,  and  of  wdiich  the  laws  are  very  largely 
knowm.  The  theory  has,  therefore,  gained  both  in 
definiteness  and  credibility  since  it  was  first  put  forward 
in  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 

There  are  certain  difficulties  which  must  be  men¬ 
tioned  in  the  way  of  the  acceptance  of  this  account  of 
the  psychological  mechanism  of  conversion.  In  the  first 
place,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  evidence  is  neces¬ 
sarily  insufficient  to  demonstrate  that  this  is  the  mech¬ 
anism  of  all  adult  conversions.  In  certain  cases  the  un¬ 
conscious  conflict  gives  signs  of  its  existence  by  the 


204}  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

effect  of  the  resistance  on  conduct ;  but  more  often  it  can 
only  be  an  inference  from  the  suddenness  of  the  emer¬ 
gence  of  the  new  mental  system  at  conversion.  The 
kind  of  evidence  required  for  complete  demonstration  is 
a  record  of  the  dreams  of  the  individual  concerned  for  a 
period  before  his  conversion.  These  would  reveal  any 
repressed  complex  which  was  occupying  his  unconscious 
mind  during  that  time.  They  could,  of  course,  only  be 
analysed  after  the  conversion,  since  otherwise  the  com¬ 
plex  would  be  made  conscious  and  it  would  be  necessary 
for  the  man  to  integrate  it  with  the  rest  of  his  mental 
life,  so  that  its  cataclysmic  outbreak  would  be  pre¬ 
vented.  The  difficulties  of  such  an  observation  are  ob¬ 
vious,  and,  so  far  as  the  present  writer  knows,  it  has 
never  been  carried  out. 

An  objection  to  all  psychological  theories  of  conver¬ 
sion  which  comes  frequently  from  religious  persons 
demands  sympathetic  treatment,  although  we  cannot 
admit  its  force.  To  them  it  appears  that  to  attribute 
conversion  to  an  action  of  the  mind,  which  can  be 
paralleled  in  secular  life,  is  equivalent  to  denying  the 
reality  of  the  divine  action  in  conversion.  There  seems 
to  be  no  sufficient  reason  for  this  fear.  If  we  find  that 
God  works  in  accordance  with  law  in  the  physical  world, 
we  may  expect  to  find  that  the  same  will  be  true  in  the 
mental  world.  The  only  effect,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  believer,  of  the  theory  suggested,  is  that  the  inter¬ 
est  in  the  conversion  process  is  shifted  from  the  actual 
moment  of  conversion  to  the  period  of  growth  of  the 
underlying  complex.  In  any  case,  it  seems  perilous  to 
found  an  argument  for  the  reality  of  divine  action  on 
our  ignorance  of  the  mechanism  of  conversion.  That  is 
bad  philosophy,  and  it  repeats  in  mental  science  an  error 
of  which  theologians  have  already  repented  in  biology. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


MYSTICAL  AND  ADOLESCENT  CONVERSIONS 

w  e  have  already  described  mystical  conversion  as  the 
change  from  an  ordinarily  religious  life  to  the  life  of  a 
religious  mystic.  By  a  mystic,  we  mean  a  person  to 
whom  the  emotional  religious  experiences  which  occur 
at  times  to  all  religious  persons  have  become  stronger 
and  more  permanent.  He  has  other  experiences  differ¬ 
ing  in  many  of  their  qualities  from  those  of  the  ordinary 
religious  person.  The  mystic  is  also  much  more  liable  to 
have  experiences  which  would  be  considered  pathologi¬ 
cal  by  the  doctor — visions,  voices,  trances,  etc.  These 
marks  are  sufficient  to  indicate,  for  the  purpose  of  the 
present  chapter,  the  kind  of  mentality  covered  by  the 
word  mystic.  They  are  not  intended  to  provide  a  defini¬ 
tion  of  mysticism. 

Although  the  development  of  the  ordinary  religious 
life  frequently  takes  place  without  any  abrupt  change 
which  can  be  described  as  conversion,  this  does  not 
appear  ever  to  be  true  in  the  case  of  the  mystic.  In  the 
lives  of  them  all  there  is  one  clearly  defined  event  which 
they  call  their  conversion.  In  the  terms  of  our  psycho¬ 
logical  theory,  this  would  seem  to  mean  that  in  the 
passage  from  an  irreligious  life  to  a  religious  life  repres¬ 
sion  does  not  always  play  a  part,  while  in  the  passage  to 
the  mystical  life  it  does.  The  religious  lives  which  de¬ 
velop  without  any  sudden  conversion  we  may  suppose 
to  be  those  in  which  the  religious  sentiment  is  integrated 
with  the  rest  of  themiental  life  without  having  been  first 
repressed. 


205 


206  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


In  the  lives  of  many  religious  mystics  we  find,  as  well 
as  the  mystical  conversion,  an  earlier  conversion  which 
often  takes  the  typical  adolescent  form.  In  others,  we 
are  told  that  the  person  was  very  religious  from  his 
childhood.  Thus  Pascal  was  first  converted  at  the  age 
of  twenty-three,  and  his  mystical  conversion  took  place 
eight  years  later.  Evan  Roberts,  the  leader  of  the 
Welsh  revival  at  the  beginning  of  this  century,  was 
religious  from  his  boyhood  and  devoted  to  prayer  and 
the  Bible.  He  was  converted  with  soul  anguish  in  1904, 
and  after  that  time  he  had  paroxysms  and  saw  visions. 
A1  Ghazzali,  who  was  a  professor  of  Theology  (Moham¬ 
medan)  at  Baghdad,  describes  how,  starting  from  dog¬ 
matic  religion,  he  passed  through  a  period  of  scepticism 
until  he  was  redeemed  by  a  light  which  God  caused  to 
penetrate  into  his  heart,  and  afterwards  he  gave  up  his 
professorship  and  became  a  sufi.1 

The  accounts  of  mystical  conversion  are  very  strik¬ 
ingly  more  uniform  than  those  which  have  so  far  been 
described.  Typically,  they  are  of  a  conventionally  relig¬ 
ious  person,  living  the  usual  life  of  the  devout  world, 
much  respected  for  his  piety  and  good  works.  He,  how¬ 
ever,  feels  a  restless  yearning  for  something  more  than 
his  life  is  giving  him.  He  begins  to  cut  himself  free 
from  the  ties  that  bind  him  to  the  fife  to  which  he  has 
been  accustomed.  Then,  after  a  longer  or  shorter  period 
of  unhappiness  due  to  a  painful  inner  conflict,  he  passes 
through  an  experience  which  he  is  unable  to  describe, 
but  which  has  given  him  a  revelation  in  the  light  of 
which  his  subsequent  life  must  be  lived.  After  this  time 
he  separates  himself  completely  from  the  world  of  men, 
and  is  absorbed  in  inner  experiences  of  pain  and  of 
pleasure  which  are  both  equally  unintelligible  to  others. 

1  The  Confessions  of  Al  Ghazzali,  trans.  by  Claude  Field. 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS  207 

Instead  of  being  universally  respected,  he  becomes  an 
object  of  scandal.  He  may  even  abandon  valuable  re¬ 
ligious  work  in  the  world  for  the  sake  of  his  new  life.1 
After  the  mystical  conversion,  his  religious  life  has 
become  much  more  highly  coloured  emotionally,  has 
become  intolerant  in  its  demands  on  all  other  interests, 
and  it  has  become  definitely  associated  with  such  ab¬ 
normal  mental  phenomena  as  visions,  locutions,  etc. 

A  case  of  mystical  conversion  which  follows  closely  on 
the  lines  just  indicated  is  that  of  Rulman  Merswin.  He 
was  a  wealthy,  pious  and  respected  merchant  of  Strass- 
burg.  He  retired  from  business  in  order  to  devote  him-  . 
self  to  religious  truth.  One  evening  as  he  was  strolling 
in  his  garden,  meditating,  a  picture  of  the  crucifix  sud¬ 
denly  presented  itself  to  his  mind.  He  was  abruptly 
filled  with  a  violent  hatred  of  the  world  and  his  own 
free-will.  “Lifting  his  eyes  to  heaven,  he  solemnly 
swore  that  he  would  utterlv  surrender  his  own  will, 
person,  and  goods  to  the  service  of  God.”  2 

The  mystical  conversion  of  Pascal  is  one  which  will 
repay  a  detailed  attention.  Less  violent  than  the  typi¬ 
cal  case  already  given,  it  follows  it  closely  in  its  general 
outlines.  In  her  account  of  the  life  of  Pascal,  Madame 
Perier  says : 

While  he  was  not  yet  twenty-four  years  of  age,  the 
providence  of  God  having  caused  an  occasion  which 
obliged  him  to  read  books  of  piety,  God  enlightened 
him  in  such  a  way  by  this  reading,  that  he  understood 
perfectly  that  the  Christian  religion  obliges  us  to  live 
only  for  God  and  to  have  no  other  object  than  Him; 

1  It-  must  be  remembered  that  this  is  only  an  account  of  the 
initial  stage  of  the  mystical  life.  It  would  be  necessary  to  modify 
it  if  we  were  to  take  into  account  its  later  phases. 

2  Mysticism,  by  Evelyn  Underhill,  quoting  Rulman  Merswin,  by 
A.  Jundt. 


208  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

and  this  truth  appeared  to  him  so  evident,  so  neces¬ 
sary,  and  so  useful,  that  it  ended  all  his  researches: 
so  that  from  that  time  he  renounced  all  other  branches 
of  knowledge  in  order  to  apply  himself  entirely  to  the 
one  thing  which  Jesus  Christ  calls  needful.1 

He  had  never  been  vicious  or  even  sceptical  in  matters 
of  religion.  From  this  time  he  came  under  the  influence 
of  the  Jansenists.  whose  outlook  was  puritanical.  He 
dissuaded  his  younger  sister,  Jacqueline,  from  her  pro¬ 
jected  marriage  on  the  ground  that  this  would  be  rob¬ 
bing  God  of  a  part  of  what  belonged  to  Him.  At  this 
time  he  became  a  chronic  invalid,  but  he  bore  his  suffer¬ 
ings  wTith  much  resignation.  The  physicians  ordered  a 
complete  cessation  of  intellectual  work,  and  that  every 
possible  opportunity  should  be  taken  for  relaxation  and 
entertainment.  At  Auvergne  he  mixed  freely  with  the 
world,  but  without  any  irregularity  of  life.  He  opposed 
his  sister's  entry  into  a  convent.  His  life  and  interests 
were  becoming  more  and  more  secular. 

Somewhere  about  this  time  he  composed  his  Dis¬ 
course  on  the  Passions  of  Love.  The  Jansenists,  who  re¬ 
garded  it  as  an  imperfection  that  so  great  a  man  should 
have  experienced  human  love,  have  left  us  little  evi¬ 
dence  concerning  this  event.  The  object  of  his  love  was 
probably  Mile  de  Roannez,  sister  of  Pascal’s  friend,  the 
Due  de  Roannez.  She  appears  to  have  been  a  beautiful 
and  accomplished  woman.  The  difference  in  their  rank 
must  have  made  his  attachment  hopeless.  Under  his 
influence  she  became  a  novice  in  Port  Royal,  but  re¬ 
turned  to  the  world  after  his  death.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  the  deeply  emotional  nature  of  his  subse¬ 
quent  conversion  was  largely  determined  by  his  redirec¬ 
tion  to  Heaven  of  this  earthly  love. 

1  Vie  de  Blaise  Pascal,  by  Mme.  Perier,  his  sister. 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS 


209 


He  says  in  the  Discourse : 

Man  does  not  like  to  dwell  by  himself;  he  loves,  how¬ 
ever:  he  must  seek,  therefore,  an  object  of  love  else¬ 
where.  He  can  find  it  only  in  beauty.  .  .  .  The  most 
suitable  sustainer  of  beauty  is  a  woman.  When  she 
has  intellect,  she  animates  and  elevates  it  wonderfully. 
.  .  .  Man  alone  is  something  imperfect;  he  must  find 
another  in  order  to  be  happy.  He  often  seeks  this  in 
equality  of  condition,  because  freedom  and  opportunity 
for  showing  himself  are  then  met  more  easily.  Never¬ 
theless  we  sometimes  go  above  ourselves,  and  we  feel 
the  fire  burn  higher,  although  we  dare  not  tell  her  who 
has  caused  it.  When  we  love  a  lady  of  unequal  con¬ 
dition,  ambition  may  accompany  the  beginning  of 
love;  but  in  a  short  time  it  becomes  the  master.  It  is 
a  tyrant  who  suffers  no  companion.  .  ,  .  The  pleasure 
of  loving  without  daring  to  tell  has  its  pains,  but  it 
also  has  its  sweetnesses.  With  what  transport  do  we 
not  form  all  our  actions  with  the  object  of  pleasing  a 
person  whom  we  esteem  infinitely?  1 

But  he  felt  dissatisfied  with  the  things  of  the  world. 
His  sister,  who  was  now  a  nun,  often  exhorted  him  to 
lead  a  more  separated  life, 

and  finally  did  so  with  so  much  power  and  sweetness 
that  she  persuaded  him  as  he  had  first  persuaded  her, 
absolutely  to  leave  the  world;  so  that  he  resolved  to 
leave  altogether  all  the  intercourse  of  the  world,  and 
to  cut  off  all  the  superfluities  of  life,  even  at  the  peril 
of  his  health,  because  he  believed  that  salvation  was 
preferable  to  all  things.  He  was  then  thirty  years 
old.2 

1  “Discours  sur  les  passions  de  Famour,”  in  Pensees,  Fragments 
et  Lettres  de  Blaise  Pascal,  by  M.  Prosper  Faugere. 

2  Vie,  by  Mme  Perier. 


210 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


The  change,  however,  was  not  yet  completed.  His 
heart  refused  to  obey  his  reason.  He  had  learned  to 
despise  the  world,  but  not  to  love  God.  He  made  pas¬ 
sionate  efforts  to  redirect  his  will.  But  this  change 
came  only  by  degrees,  as  he  learned  that  reason  and 
practice  were  inadequate  by  themselves.  Two  events 
probably  contributed  to  his  final  conversion.  A  car¬ 
riage  accident  took  place,  in  which  his  life  was  endan¬ 
gered,  and  his  weak  state  of  health  caused  him  to  faint 
away.  In  November,  1654,  he  heard  a  sermon  by  M. 
Sinslin,  in  which  the  preacher  insisted  upon  the  neces¬ 
sity  for  entire  surrender  to  God.  Shortly  after  this, 
Pascal  fell  into  a  trance  in  which  he  had  a  very  vivid 
impression  of  the  presence  of  God,  and  seemed  to  be 
illuminated  by  a  supernatural  fire.  He  then  took  the 
decisive  step  of  putting  himself  under  the  direction  of 
M.  de  Saci  of  Port  Royal. 

After  his  death,  the  following  writing  was  found  on 
a  paper  worn  over  his  heart,  and  in  a  very  slightly 
different  form  on  a  parchment.  It  is  clearly  a  record  of 
his  conversion  experience : 

L’an  de  grace  1654.  Lundi  23  novembre,  jour  de  St 
Clement,  pape  et  martyr,  et  autres  au  martyrologe. 
Yeille  de  St  Chrysogone,  martyr  et  autres.  Depuis 
environ  dix  heures  et  demie  du  soir  jusques  environ 
minuit  et  demi,  Feu. 

Dieu  d’Abraham,  Dieu  dTsaac,  Dieu  de  Jacob.  Non 
des  philosophes  et  des  savants.  Certitude.  Certitude. 
Sentiment.  Joie.  Paix.  Dieu  de  Jesus-Christ.  Deum 
meum  et  Deum  vestrum.  Ton  Dieu  sera  mon  Dieu — 
Oubli  du  monde  et  de  tout  hormis  Dieu.  II  ne  se  trouve 
que  par  les  voies  enseignees  dans  TEvangile.  Grandeur 
de  fame  humaine.  Pere  juste,  le  monde  ne  t’a  point 
connu,  mais  je  t’ai  connu.  Joie,  joie,  joie,  pleurs  de  joie. 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS 


211 


Je  m’en  suis  separe.  Dereliquerunt  me  fontes  aquae 
vivae.  Mon  Dieu  me  quitterez-vous?  Que  je  n’en 
sois  pas  separe  eternellement. 

Cette  est  la  vie  eternelle  qu’ils  te  connaissent  seul 
vrai  Dieu  et  celui  que  tu  as  envoye  J.-C.  Jesus-Christ. 
Jesus-Christ.  Je  m’en  suis  separe;  je  1'ai  fui,  renonce, 
crucifie.  Que  je  n’en  sois  jamais  separe.  II  ne  se  con¬ 
serve  que  par  les  voies  enseignees  dans  l’Evangile. 
Renonciation  totale  et  douce,  etc.1 

Before  attempting  a  psychological  explanation  of 
mystical  conversion,  it  will  be  well  to  try  to  give  a  psy¬ 
chological  description  of  it.  If  we  turn  to  the  tradi¬ 
tional  accounts  of  mystical  conversion  we  find  that  the 
preliminary  conflict  is  described  as  the  struggle  of  the 
individual  to  renounce  his  own  will  and  to  submit  him¬ 
self  entirely  to  the  will  of  God.  The  moment  of  his  con¬ 
version  is  when,  by  Divine  Grace,  he  is  enabled  to  do 
this.  His  subsequent  life  is  one  lived  entirely  free  from 
his  own  will.  This  freedom  may  be  shown,  and  at  the 
same  time  safeguarded  for  the  Catholic  by  complete 
obedience  to  his  director  or  to  the  superior  of  his  com¬ 
munity.  This  is  the  significance  of  Pascal’s  expression : 
“Soumission  totale  a  Jesus-Christ.  et  a  mon  directeur.” 

This  account  clearly  needs  a  certain  amount  of  trans¬ 
lation  into  modern  terms,  its  use  of  the  word  will  is  one 
which  we  have  ceased  to  find  useful.  Let  us  study  the 
conduct  of  the  mystic  engaged  in  his  preliminary  con¬ 
flict  with  the  idea  of  finding  out  what  he  is  actually  sup¬ 
pressing.  It  is  not  merely  what  he  regards  as  sin  even 
of  the  most  venial  kind.  He  denies  himself  everything 

1 Pensees ,  Fragments  et  Lettres  de  Blaise  Pascal,  by  M.  Prosper 
Faugere.  The  following  additional  words  were  found  at  the  end 
of  the  parchment  copy:  ‘‘Soumission  totale  a  Jesus-Christ  et  a 
mon  directeur.  Eternellement  en  joie  pour  un  jour  d’exercice  sur 
la  terre.  Non  obliviscar  sermones  tuos.  Amen.” 


212 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


that  ministers  to  his  own  desires — food,  comfort  and 
companionship.  With  particular  severity  he  denies 
himself  a  luxury  valued  highly  by  even  the  most  devout 
of  ordinary  religious  persons,  the  good  opinion  of  his 
fellow-men.  He  is  trying  to  rid  himself  of  all  the  desires 
which  bind  him  to  the  outside  world  in  order  that  he 
may  be  able  more  completely  to  direct  the  energy  of  his 
soul  towards  the  one  object  of  the  religious  sentiment. 
In  order  to  express  this  with  clearness,  we  need  a  term 
for  that  energy  of  the  mind  which  is  differentiated  into 
particular  desires,  into  hunger  and  love,  and  into  the 
less  immediately  instinctive  desires  connected  with  such 
abstract  sentiments  as  the  love  of  knowledge  or  of  fame. 
For  this  conception  we  shall  use  the  word  libido.1  The 
mystic,  then,  is  trying  to  divert  his  libido  from  the 
external  world  in  order  that  he  may  direct  it  entirely  to 
God.  In  order  that  he  may  accomplish  this,  he  does 
violence  to  all  his  natural  affections.  He  tries  to  destroy 
his  love  of  comfort  by  scourging  himself  and  fasting. 
He  maltreats  his  self-regarding  sentiment  by  allowing 
his  body  to  become  disfigured  by  neglect  and  dirt,  and 
by  deliberately  acting  in  such  a  way  as  to  provoke  the 
contempt  of  other  persons.  He  shuts  himself  away  from 
his  fellow-men,  so  that  he  may  not  obtain  pleasure  from 
his  gregarious  instinct. 

Since  human  love  makes  more  insistent  demands  on 
his  libido  than  any  other  sentiment,  it  is  the  one  he  most 
sternly  avoids.  It  seems  probable,  indeed,  that  the 
failure  to  find  a  satisfactory  resting-place  for  his  libido 


1  In  all  places  where  this  word  occurs,  I  shall  be  using  it  in  the  . 
sense  adopted  by  Jung,  and  not  in  the  exclusively  sexual  sense 
of  Freud.  The  libido  of  Jung  is  libido  plus  interest  in  the  Freudian 
terminology.  The  word  seems  preferable  to  Jung’s  own  alternative 
'psychic  energy,  and  elan,  which  has  sometimes  been  used,  has 
already  been  given  a  biological  connotation  by  Bergson. 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS 


213 


in  a  human  love  object  is  often  the  determining  incident 
which  turns  his  feet  into  the  path  which  leads  to  mysti¬ 
cal  conversion.  Pascal  has  left  us  a  record  of  his  own 
unsuccessful  attempt  to  find  happiness  in  human  love  in 
the  work  already  quoted.  St  Catherine  of  Genoa  and 
Mine  Guyon  were  both  extremely  unhappy  in  their 
married  lives  before  their  mystical  conversions. 

The  explanation  of  the  mystical  conversion  which  I 
would  suggest,  is  that  it  is  the  redirection  of  the  whole 
of  the  libido  into  the  religious  sentiment.  We  may 
express  this  in  other  words  by  saying  that  it  is  the 
religious  sublimation  of  the  entire  instinctive  nature. 

We  may  notice  here  a  curious  feature  which  makes 
the  records  of  mystical  conversion  singularly  repellent 
even  to  readers  who  are  themselves  religious  and,  on  the 
whole,  sympathetic  towards  mysticism.  This  is  the  in¬ 
discriminate  suppression  of  human  activities  which 
other  people  regard  as  good  with  those  which  are  gen¬ 
erally  considered  bad.  The  convert  of  the  ordinary  type 
abandons  drink  and  tries  to  lead  a  decent  life.  With  his 
conversion  we  can  sympathise.^  But  when  we  find  the 
mystical  convert  not  merely  treating  his  body  with  un¬ 
reasonable  severity,  but  also  abandoning  all  the  decent 
and  beautiful  ties  of  human  affection,  and  refusing  to 
live  a  life  of  social  and  religious  usefulness,  we  feel  that 
this  is  something  with  which  no  reasonable  person  can 
have  any  sympathy.  Yet  the  inner  necessity  which 
drives  the  mystic  to  these  excesses  is  undoubtedly  a 
reality  for  him.  Suso  and  other  mystics  have  felt  the 
impulse  to  lead  an  ordinary,  decent  and  respectable 
Christian  life  as  one  of  their  most  subtle  and  dangerous 
temptations.  Tor  them  it  was  clearly  a  choice  between 
suppressing  all  activities  which  gave  them  pleasure  and 
failing  in  the  attainment  of  their  goal. 


214  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


We  may  notice  in  passing  that  this  tendency  is  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  religious  mystic.  Persons  who 
have  consecrated  the  whole  of  their  libido  to  other 
activities  show  the  same  peculiarity.  Scientific  research 
workers  often  show  the  same  indifference  to  the  de¬ 
mands  of  natural  affection.  Suso’s  temptation  to  lead 
an  ordinarily  useful  and  respectable  religious  life  might 
be  exactly  paralleled  by  the  research  worker’s  tempta¬ 
tion  to  leave  the  investigations  interesting  to  him  for 
the  sake  of  doing  work  which  is  not  only  socially  valu¬ 
able,  but  is  also  sufficiently  remunerative  to  enable  him 
to  marry  and  live  in  comfort.  His  answer  to  the  temp¬ 
tation  is  the  same  as  Suso’s.  He  feels  that  if  he  were  t,o 
yield  to  it  he  would  be  selling  his  soul.  Other  people 
have  no  more  sympathy  with  him  than  they  have  with 
the  religious  mystic. 

An  interesting  example  of  the  tendency  to  repress 
good  and  bad  desires  indiscriminately  has  been  brought 
to  the  notice  of  the  present  writer  by  a  doctor.  It  is  a 
case  of  ordinary  adult,  not  mystical,  conversion.  A  man 
who  drank  excessively,  but  lived  on  affectionate  terms 
with  his  wife  and  family,  became  converted  by  a  relig¬ 
ious  organisation.  He  gave  up  drink  and  became  an 
active  worker  in  this  religious  body ;  but  he  abandoned 
his  wife  and  children,  and  made  them  an  entirely  insuffi¬ 
cient  allowance,  so  that  they  were  reduced  to  poverty. 
Two  years  later  he  lapsed,  took  to  drink  again,  but  re¬ 
turned  to  his  wife  and  family,  supported  them,  and 
behaved  in  his  usual  affectionate  way  towards  them.  A 
few  months  later,  he  was  again  converted.  He  an¬ 
nounced  his  intention  of  giving  up  his  occupation  and 
living  on  the  very  small  pay  of  an  official  of  the  religious 
organisation  which  had  converted  him.  He  refused  to 
support  his  wife  and  family  any  longer  and  said  they 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS 


215 


were  living  in  sin.  He  sold  his  house  over  their  heads 
and  they  were  left  destitute.  Meanwhile,  he  behaved  as 
a  very  efficient  worker  for  his  religious  organisation. 
They  thought  highly  of  him,  knowing,  of  course,  noth¬ 
ing  of  his  domestic  affairs.  He  preached  and  organised 
their  work  for  a  district  with  conspicuous  success. 

We  have  here,  in  a  simple  form,  an  example  of  that 
repression  of  desires  which  are  commonly  regarded  as 
good  with  those  which  are  recognised  as  evil,  which 
becomes  so  marked  in  mystical  conversion.  With  the 
possibility  of  its  moral  justification,  we  are  not,  as  psy¬ 
chologists,  concerned.  We  have  emphasised  this  feature 
because  it  is  one  which  tends  to  be  slurred  over  by  works 
on  mysticism.  It  must  be  considered  if  we  are  to  under¬ 
stand  mystical  conversion.  A  more  detailed  discussion 
of  its  psychological  meaning  may  conveniently  be  de¬ 
ferred  until  the  remaining  kind  of  religious  conversion 
has  been  dealt  with. 

It  would,  no  doubt,  be  possible  to  find  cases  of  the 
forms  of  conversion  discussed  in  the  last  chapter  taking 
place  at  adolescence,  but  there  seems  no  reason  for  sup¬ 
posing  that  they  are  commoner  at  the  period  of  adoles¬ 
cence  than  at  any  other  age.  At  the  same  time,  there  is 
a  kind  of  conversion  which  has  certain  well-marked 
characters  of  its  own,  which  appears  to  occur  only  some¬ 
where  in  the  neighbourhood  of  adolescence,  and  it  is  to 
this  that  I  propose  to  give  the  name  of  adolescent  con¬ 
version.  This  is  the  only  kind  of  conversion  which  has 
been  considered  at  all  by  most  of  the  writers  on  the 
subject,  Starbuck  has  shown,  as  the  result  of  an  elab¬ 
orate  statistical  enquiry,  that  a  large  majority  of  the 
total  number  of  religious  conversions  take  place  be¬ 
tween  the  ages  of  twelve  and  twenty-five.  The  law 
which  he  develops  is  that  conversion  tends  to  take  place 


216 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


between  the  periods  of  maximum  physical  change  in 
puberty. 

A  comparison  with  those  of  adults  shows  that  adoles¬ 
cent  conversions  have  certain  peculiar  features.  These 
are: 

(a)  A  tendency  to  folkrw  conventional  lines  in  the 
event  itself  and  in  descriptions  of  it. 

(b)  A  uniform  exaggeration  of  preconversion  sin 
and  an  equal  exaggeration  of  post-conversion  virtue. 

(c)  A  larger  number  of  adolescent  conversions  seem 
to  be  the  result  of  preaching. 

(d)  In  a  large  number  of  cases  the  change  is  not  a 
very  permanent  one. 

Before  discussing  the  significance  of  these  differences, 
we  will  give  a  brief  account  of  a  fairly  typical  adolescent 
conversion.  The  one  chosen  is  the  conversion  of  Wil¬ 
liam  Booth,  described  in  the  Life  by  Harold  Begbie.  In 
taking  a  case  in  which  the  redirection  was  permanent 
and  so  extraordinarily  fruitful,  wTe  are  to  some  extent 
departing  from  type.  This  departure,  however,  is  ne¬ 
cessitated  by  the  difficulty  of  finding  the  more  common 
transient  changes  recorded  wTith  sufficient  detail. 

Looking  back  on  his  preconversion  days,  General 
Booth  exclaimed:  “I  have  often  wondered  that  I  did 
not  go  straight  to  hell.”  It  seems  clear  that  he  is  re¬ 
proaching  himself  for  no  worse  fault  than  that  of  being 
a  high-spirited  leader  in  the  games  of  the  boys  of  the 
village  and  being  indifferent  to  higher  things,  for  he 
also  declares:  “I  have  heard  my  mother  say  that  I  never 
caused  her  an  hour’s  real  anxiety  in  her  life.” 

There  was  no  religious  atmosphere  in  his  home,  but 
he  used  to  go  as  a  child  to  the  parish  church,  which, 
however,  made  no  particular  impression  on  him.  His 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS 


217 


first  religious  impression  was  of  the  Separate  and  relig¬ 
ious”  life  of  a  cousin;  and  he  was  haunted  by  a  remark 
this  cousin  made  to  him:  “Religion  is  something  that 
comes  to  you  from  the  outside  of  you.”  He  also  records 
that  at  one  time  he  was  much  affected  by  the  hymn, 
“Here  we  suffer  grief  and  pain.”  Both  of  these  impres¬ 
sions  faded,  and  he  says  that  he  settled  down  to  the 
utmost  indifference.  However,  he  felt  an  inward  dis¬ 
satisfaction  with  his  condition.  “My  heart,”  he  says, 
“was  a  blank.” 

His  early  life  was  overshadowed  by  the  financial 
trouble  of  his  family.  Then  suddenly  they  were 
plunged  into  poverty  by  his  father’s  complete  ruin. 
Instead  of  being  made  into  a  gentleman  as  his  father 
had  hoped,  the  boy  was  sent  into  a  pawnbroker’s  shop — 
an  event  which  caused  him  lasting  shame.  This  hap¬ 
pened  at  the  age  of  thirteen.  Little  impression  seems  to 
have  been  made  on  him  by  the  subsequent  death  of  his 
father  and  his  death-bed  repentance.  From  this  time, 
however,  he  began  to  be  interested  in  religion  and  to 
attend  chapel.  He  began  to  realise  the  superiority  of 
the  religious  life  over  the  purely  worldly  existence  he 
had  lived  for  fourteen  years,  and  a  hunger  sprang  up  for 
it.  “I  wanted,”  he  says,  “to  be  right  with  God.  I  wanted 
to  be  right  in  myself.  I  wanted  a  life  spent  in  putting 
other  people  right.”  He  seems  always  to  have  had 
what  he  regarded  as  an  instinctive  belief  in  God  even 
during  his  worldly  childhood. 

While  this  unhappiness  and  the  sense  of  the  reality  of 
God  were  deepening  in  his  soul,  he  devoted  himself  with 
zeal  to  the  interests  of  his  employer.  He  meant  to  get 
on  in  the  world.  He  also  became  interested  in  political 
reform,  and  his  sympathy  with  the  poor  was  shown  by 
his  adherence  to  the  Chartists. 


218 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


The  condition  of  the  suffering  people  around  me — 
people  with  whom  I  had  been  so  long  familiar,  and 
whose  agony  seemed  to  reach  its  climax  about  this 
time — undoubtedly  affected  me  very  deeply. 

During  the  year  of  his  conversion,  he  saw  children  cry¬ 
ing  for  bread  in  the  streets  of  Nottingham. 

In  his  sixteenth  year,  he  determined  to  make  the 
surrender  of  personality ,  which  precedes  conversion. 
He  was  held  back  by  the  memory  of  a  sin.  In  a  boyish 
trading  affair  he  had  managed  to  make  a  profit  out  of 
his  companions.  They,  supposing  all  to  have  been  done 
in  the  way  of  generous  fellowship,  had  given  him  a  silver 
pencil-case  as  a  token  of  their  gratitude.  It  wTould  not 
have  been  difficult  to  have  returned  the  case,  but  he 
could  not  bring  himself  to  confess  the  deception  of 
which  he  had  been  guilty.  He  suddenly  made  a  resolu¬ 
tion  to  end  the  matter,  rushed  out  to  the  person  chiefly 
wronged,  acknowledged  what  he  had  done,  and  re¬ 
turned  the  pencil-case.  He  felt  that  the  guilty  burden 
had  rolled  away  from  his  heart,  and  that  peace  had  come 
in  its  place.  This  wTas  the  moment  of  his  conversion. 
He  was  happy,  but  he  says  that  he  had  no  experience  of 
emotional  religion. 

I  felt  .  .  .  that  I  could  willingly  and  joyfully  travel 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth  for  Jesus  Christ,  and  suffer 
anything  imaginable  to  help  the  souls  of  other  men. 
“Rather  than  yearning  for  the  world’s  pleasures,”  he 
says,  “books,  gains,  or  recreations,  I  found  my  nature 
leading  me  to  come  away  from  it  all.  It  had  lost  all 
charm  for  me.  What  w^ere  all  the  novels,  even  those 
of  Sir  Walter  Scott  or  Fenimore  Cooper,  compared  with 
the  story  of  my  Saviour?  What  were  the  choicest 
orators  compared  with  Paul?  What  was  the  hope  of 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS 


219 


my  money-earning,  even  with  all  my  desire  to  help 
my  poor  mother  and  sisters,  in  comparison  with  the 
imperishable  wealth  of  ingathered  souls?  I  soon  be¬ 
gan  to  despise  everything  that  the  world  had  to  offer 
me/’ 

As  a  record  of  the  actual  life  of  the  boy  at  this  time — 
though  not,  indeed,  of  his  later  life — this  is  undoubtedly 
exaggerated.  He  still  continued  to  be  the  cleverest  and 
most  dependable  of  his  employer’s  stall. 

This  account  of  the  conversion  experiences  of  General 
Booth  is  an  illustration  of  the  tendency  of  the  process  to 
follow  a  conventional  path.  Most  of  the  essential  fea¬ 
tures  of  the  story  could  be  paralleled  in  any  other  narra¬ 
tive  of  an  adolescent  conversion.  There  is,  in  addition, 
the  characteristic  exaggeration  of  the  state  of  sinfulness 
before  the  conversion  and  of  the  state  of  virtue  after  it. 
1  have  often  wondered  that  I  did  not  go  straight  to  hell 
is  an  expression  of  self-condemnation  which  could  not 
have  been  justified  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  outside 
observer.  Nor  was  there  probably  more  justification 
for  describing  his  emotional  attitude  after  his  conver¬ 
sion  as  a  despising  of  ail  that  the  world  had  to  offer  him. 
Both  of  these  points  can  be  seen  more  clearly,  however, 
when  we  study,  not  a  single  conversion  record,  but  a 
series  of  them,  such  as  that  found  in  Starbuck’s  Psychol¬ 
ogy  of  Religion.  With  a  monotony  which  becomes 
wearisome  we  find  subject  after  subject  describing  the 
same  experience  in  the  same  conventional  language. 
This  is,  no  doubt,  partly  due  to  a  process  of  convention¬ 
alisation  which  takes  place  in  thought  after  the  event 
itself ;  but  it  probably  also  points  to  a  uniformity  in  the 
actual  experiences  of  the  event. 

We  find,  too,  in  Starbuck’s  book,  that  his  subjects 
consistently  tend  to  describe  their  condition  before  con- 


220 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


version  in  language  which  would  be  strong  if  it  were 
used  of  a  hardened  criminal  instead  of  a  child ;  and  their 
state  after  conversion  in  language  which  could  only  be 
applied  accurately  to  the  strictly  separated  life  of  a 
saint.  For  example,  a  male  convert  of  sixteen  says: 

Before  conversion  my  mind  wTas  in  a  state  of  great 
anxiety.  The  fleshly  mind  was  all  aflame,  and  my 
guilt  was  hideous  to  me.  Because  I  belonged  to  church 
I  felt  myself  a  hypocrite. 

A  female  convert  says  of  her  state  after  conversion: 

I  was  a  new  creature  in  Christ  Jesus.  Everything 
seemed  heavenly  rather  than  earthly;  everything  was 
so  lovely.  I  had  a  love  for  everybody.  It  was  such  a 
blessed  experience !  Going  home  I  walked  on  the  curb¬ 
stone  rather  than  walk  or  talk  with  ungodly  people. 

There  seems  to  be  no  reason  to  dismiss  these  ten¬ 
dencies  as  mere  verbal  exaggerations  for  the  purpose  of 
edification,  although  this  factor  undoubtedly  plays  a 
part,  particularly  when  conversion  experiences  have 
been  recorded  for  publication.  There  appear  to  be  also 
real  emotional  experiences  which  are  expressed  in  such 
exaggerations.  The  tendency  to  exaggeration  of  post¬ 
conversion  virtue  is  probably  little  more  than  the  nat¬ 
ural  difference,  in  judging  a  highly  emotional  state,  be¬ 
tween  the  point  of  view  of  the  subject  himself  and  other 
persons.  The  subject  judges  himself  introspectively, 
and  is  mainly  influenced  by  the  rich  emotional  content 
of  his  desire  for  a  new  life.  Other  persons  judge  him 
from  the  point  of  view  of  observers  of  his  behavior,  and 
find  very  little  better  in  his  life  and  even  a  certain 
amount  that  seems  to  them  worse.  The  exaggeration  of 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS 


221 


preconversion  vice  is  probably  the  more  important  of 
the  two.  The  above  quotation  from  Starbuck  suggests 
what  I  believe  to  be  the  true  explanation — that  it  is  an 
expression  of  a  morbid  horror  of  the  growing  sex-instinct 
(due,  no  doubt,  in  part  to  unwise  teaching). 

Certain  of  the  features  which  have  been  described  as 
typical  of  adolescent  conversion  seem  to  point  to  the 
fact  that  in  them  suggestion  plays  a  large  part,  and  that 
they  are  not,  as  were  the  cases  previously  considered, 
mainly  products  of  the  individual’s  own  self-determined 
mental  life.  If  this  were  the  case,  it  would  explain  the 
tendency  of  adolescent  conversion  to  follow  a  well- 
defined  course  as  well  as  its  dependence  on  preaching 
and  its  tendency  to  impermanence.  But  though  the 
effects  of  suggestion  may  play  a  large  part  in  adolescent 
conversion,  it  would  appear  to  be  unsound  to  dismiss  the 
process  as  merely  a  result  of  suggestion.  Although  sug¬ 
gestion  undoubtedly  helps  to  determine  the  form  and 
even  the  occurrence  of  mental  events,  there  is  no  reason 
for  supposing  that  it  could  ever  originate  such  a  process 
as  conversion,  unless  there  were  already  in  the  mind  a 
conflict  which  predisposed  it  to  conversion.  Moreover, 
the  uniformity  of  the  descriptions  of  adolescent  con¬ 
versions  may  not  be  entirely  due  to  the  influence  of 
suggestion,  but  may  be  the  same  as  that  postulated  for 
a  similar  uniformity  in  mystical  conversions — the  fact 
that  they  are  the  result  of  a  single  and  uniform  conflict. 

Many  of  the  writers  on  this  subject  have  been  satis¬ 
fied  with  the  explanation  that  adolescent  conversion  is 
the  normal  psychic  change  at  this  age  which  has  been 
given  a  religious  colouring.  This  normal  mental  change 
is  essentially  a  change  from  a  system  of  sentiments  in 
which  the  principal  object  is  the  self  to  a  system  in 
which  other  people  occupy  the  larger  part  of  the  indi- 


222 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


vidual’s  interest.  Thus,  the  awakening  of  the  sex-life  is 
accompanied  by  a  large  development  of  altruistic  senti¬ 
ment,  in  addition  to  that  concerned  with  the  search  for 
a  particular  love  object.  Such  writers  as  Starbuck  seem 
to  think  that  conversion  is  simply  the  awakening  of 
these  altruistic  sentiments,  and  that  the  sense  of  sin 
which  accompanies  conversion  is  the  revulsion  from  the 
previous  egocentric  life. 

This  is  no  doubt  true,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  be  ade¬ 
quate.  The  new  orientation  towards  the  external  world 
which  accompanies  adolescence  and  is  characterised  by 
the  birth  of  the  disinterested  emotions  and  sentiments 
certainly  finds  its  expression  in  the  new  religion  of  the 
adolescent,  so  this  element  plays  a  part  in  adolescent 
conversion.  But  the  religious  sentiment  is  not  merely 
altruism,  although  an  increase  of  altruistic  feeling  ordi¬ 
narily  accompanies  its  awakening.  It  is  essentially  the 
redirection  of  the  energy  of  the  soul  towards  God,  and 
unless  this  redirection  accompanies  conversion,  it  is 
merely  an  ethical  crisis  and  not  a  religious  one. 

Moreover,  the  characteristic  features  of  the  conver¬ 
sion  change  in  adult  conversions  were  traced  back  to  a 
conflict  due  to  a  repression.  It  is  therefore  reasonable 
to  look  for  a  similar  mechanism  in  adolescent  conver¬ 
sion.  There  is  one  repression  which  normally  accom¬ 
panies  adolescence,  and  that  is  the  repression  of  the 
growing  sex-instinct  (or  love  instinct)  itself.  Under  the 
conditions  of  ordinary  civilised  life  it  is  not  usual  for 
this  instinct  to  find  its  satisfaction  at  this  time  in  a  real 
love  object.  It  therefore  leads  an  underground  exist¬ 
ence  in  the  realm  of  phantasy  thinking,  and  it  may  be 
more  completely  repressed  by  the  morbid  horror  of  sex 
to  which  reference  has  already  been  made.  This  re¬ 
pressed  instinct  may  become  pathogenic  and  find  an 


MYSTICAL  CONVERSIONS 


223 


outlet  in  perverted  behaviour  or  in  neurotic  symptoms. 
It  may,  on  the  other  hand,  be  sublimated — i.e.  the 
energy  of  the  repressed  instinct  may  be  directed  into 
channels  in  which  it  becomes  valuable,  such  as  intellec¬ 
tual  work,  art  or  religion.  The  conversion  of  adoles¬ 
cence  appears  to  be  simply  the  sudden  solution  of  this 
conflict,  at  least  temporarily,  by  the  sublimation  of  the 
repressed  love  instinct  into  religious  channels.  The  in¬ 
stinct  gives  the  qualities  of  its  own  emotions  to  the  re¬ 
ligious  feelings  which  spring  from  it,  hence  the  emo¬ 
tional  intensity  which  is  characteristic  of  adolescent 
religion. 

It  is  interesting  to  notice  in  this  connection  that,  in 
the  youthful  religious  conflicts  of  Blessed  Henry  Suso, 
he  is  drawn  to  his  object  under  the  form  of  an  erotic 
phantasy. 

He  had  from  his  youth  up  a  loving  heart.  Now  the 
Eternal  Wisdom  is  represented  in  Holy  Scripture  under 
a  lovely  guise  as  a  gracious  loving  mistress,  who  dis¬ 
plays  her  charms  with  the  intent  to  please  everyone; 
discoursing  the  while  tenderly,  in  female  form,  of  the 
desire  she  has  to  win  all  hearts  to  herself,  and  saying 
how  deceitful  all  other  mistresses  are  and  how  truly 
loving  and  constant  she  is.  This  drew  his  young  soul 
to  her  .  .  .  and  he  began  to  feel  a  yearning  in  his 
loving  soul,  and  thoughts  would  come  to  him  like 
these:  Truly  thou  shouldst  make  trial  of  thy  fortune, 
whether  perchance  this  high  mistress,  of  whom  thou 
hast  heard  tell  such  marvels,  will  become  thy  love ;  for 
in  truth  thy  wild  young  heart  cannot  long  remain 
without  a  love.1 

If  we  compare  our  conclusions  on  the  psychological 

1  The  Life  of  Blessed  Henry  Suso,  by  Himself,  trans.  by  T.  F. 

Knox,  chap.  rv. 


224 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


processes  at  work  in  adolescent  conversion  with  those 
we  reached  in  discussing  mystical  conversion,  we  find 
that  the  principal  difference  between  them  is  the  more 
extended  nature  of  the  disturbance  in  the  latter.  Both 
are  the  result  of  sublimation  of  the  libido  into  religious 
channels ;  but  in  mystical  conversion  it  is  not  only  that 
part  of  the  libido  specialised  in  the  sex-instinct  that  is 
sublimated,  but  the  whole  of  the  libido  employed  in  the 
activities  and  affections  of  this-world  life.  A  possible 
explanation  of  this  difference  is  that  in  later  life  differ¬ 
ent  sentiments  .become  associated  together  in  such  a 
way  that  energy  cannot  be  withdrawn  from  one  without 
at  the  same  time  being  withdrawn  from  others.  The 
case  quoted  of  the  converted  drunkard  may  be  regarded 
as  an  intermediate  one  between  mystical  and  ordinary 
adult  conversion.  The  disturbance  of  the  convert’s  dis¬ 
tribution  of  libido  is  less  than  it  would  be  in  a  typical 
mystical  conversion;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  he  cannot 
suppress  his  desire  for  drink  without  at  the  same  time 
suppressing  his  love  for  his  wife  and  family. 


CHAPTER  XV 


MYSTICISM 

I  do  not  propose  to  devote  a  very  great  space  to  the 
consideration  of  mysticism.  The  subject  has  already 
been  written  on  so  largely  that  a  heavy  responsibility 
rests  on  anyone  who  would  increase  that  vast  volume. 
The  phenomena  of  mysticism  (like  those  of  conversion) 
are  striking,  and  it  has  been  found  easier  to  interest  peo¬ 
ple  in  them  than  in  the  more  obscure,  but  at  least 
equally  important,  psychological  problems  connected 
with  the  religion  of  ordinary  persons.  For  this  reason, 
the  psychological  study  of  religion  has  become  in  a 
great  measure  simply  the  study  of  mysticism  and  of 
conversion.  Of  the  literature  of  religious  mysticism,  the 
student  of  religion  should  be  acquainted  with  the  fol¬ 
lowing  works:  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  by 
Baron  F.  von  Hiigel;  Etudes  d’kistoire  et  de  psychologie 
du  Mysticisms,  by  Professor  Henri  Delacroix;  1  The 
Graces  of  Interior  Prayer,  by  Fr.  Poulain;  and  the  last 
chapters  of  The  Religious  Consciousness,  by  Professor 
J.  Bissett  Pratt,  to  mention  only  a  few  books  of  out¬ 
standing  importance.  I  will  be  content  to  give  a  very 
brief  outline  of  the  phenomena  of  religious  mysticism 
and  of  the  schemes  of  classification  which  have  been 
proposed  for  them. 

Few  words  have  been  used  with  such  a  bewildering 
variety  of  meanings  as  mysticism.  There  are  at  least 
five  meanings  in  common  use,  and  some  writers  use  sev- 

1  Paris,  1908. 

225 


226  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


eral  of  these  in  the  course  of  one  chapter  without  any 
indication  of  their  differences.  To  avoid  this  confusion, 
it  is  necessary  to  decide  in  what  sense  we  shall  use  it  and 
to  be  consistent  in  that  use.  It  is  not  necessary  to  main¬ 
tain  that  our  use  of  it  is  in  any  sense  the  one  right  use. 
I  propose  to  adopt  the  same  usage  as  such  Roman  Cath¬ 
olic  writers  as  Poulain,  to  whom  a  mystic  is  a  person 
who  experiences  a  particular  kind  of  mental  prayer. 
This  is  practically  a  convenient  criterion  for  mysticism, 
since  the  experience  of  these  modes  of  prayer  is  accom¬ 
panied  by  other  well  marked  changes.  The  most  notable 
of  these  is  the  peculiar  dominance  of  the  religious  senti¬ 
ment  which  is  ushered  in  by  the  mental  change  we  have 
called  mystical  conversion.  Moreover,  at  about  this 
stage  of  spiritual  development,  visions  and  locutions 
tend  to  make  their  appearance. 

Several  varieties  of  mystical  prayer  have  been  dis¬ 
tinguished,  but  it  is  convenient  to  have  a  name  for  the 
mental  state  which  is  characteristic  of  them  all,  and  to 
this  state  we  apply  the  name  contemplation.  Again,  it 
is  necessary  to  notice  that  the  word  has  had  a  large 
number  of  other  meanings  which  we  will  not  discuss. 
Contemplation  is  described  by  the  mystics  themselves 
as  “the  ineffable  perception  of  God,”  “the  experimental 
knowledge  of  God’s  in-dwelling  and  presence  within 
us,”  and  as  the  “direct  apprehension  of  God.”  Such  lan¬ 
guage  makes  us  think  of  a  form  of  the  prayer  of  simplic¬ 
ity  in  which  the  object  of  contention  is  the  idea  of  the 
presence  of  God.  If  we  examine  the  mystics’  accounts 
of  their  states  more  carefully,  however,  we  shall  find 
that  this  is  not  an  adequate  account  of  them.  The  in¬ 
trospective  account  of  the  sense  of  the  presence  of  God 
in  contemplation  shows  it  to  be  different  from  anything 
that  is  ever  experienced  in  the  prayer  of  simplicity.  It 


MYSTICISM 


227 


is  described  as  a  possession,  or  at  least  as  a  perception, 
to  distinguish  it  from  the  non-mystical  experience  which 
appears  to  its  subject  to  be  more  of  the  nature  of  think¬ 
ing  about  the  presence  of  God.  Ineffable  perception, 
experimental  knowledge  and  direct  apprehension  wTould 
not  have  been  used  to  describe  the  experience  of  the 
prayer  of  simplicity.  This  does  not  mean  that  in  con¬ 
templation  the  experience  is  more  clear  than  in  the 
prayer  of  simplicity.  On  the  contrary,  the  passage  from 
the  prayer  of  simplicity  to  the  early  stages  of  mystical 
prayer  is  often  described  in  terms  which  make  it  clear 
that  it  has  appeared  to  the  person  experiencing  it  as  a 
passage  from  clear  thinking  to  a  very  confused  percep¬ 
tion.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  words  darkness  and 
night  are  often  used  of  the  experience  of  mystical 
prayer. 

A  second  difference  which  has  already  been  briefly 
mentioned  is  the  comparative  absence  of  voluntary  con¬ 
trol  over  even  the  earliest  stages  of  mystical  prayer.  We 
saw  that  the  prayer  of  simplicity  could  be  entered  into 
or  left  voluntarily  without  any  difficulty  at  all.  Con¬ 
templation  may  begin  and  end  without  any  action  of  the 
person  experiencing  it,  and  quite  unexpectedly.  If  a 
person  experiencing  contemplation  wishes  to  emerge 
from  the  state  because  it  is  interfering  with  necessary 
activities,  he  is  unable  to  do  so  by  merely  directing  his 
attention  to  other  things.  He  has  to  make  vigorous  bod¬ 
ily  movements  and  to  walk  up  and  down.  In  the  later 
stages  he  is  unable  even  to  do  this,  since  the  power  of 
bodily  movement  may  be  completely  suspended.  Sadhu 
Sundar  Singh  describes  the  care  he  must  exercise  lest  he 
should  slip  into  ecstasy  while  he  is  working  in  cities,  and 
wushes  to  be  able  to  address  public  meetings. 

A  third  difference  is  the  suspension  of  certain  kinds 


228 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


of  activity  in  contemplation.  Even  in  the  earliest 
stages,  any  effort  of  directed  thinking  becomes  ex¬ 
tremely  difficult;  such  effort,  for  example,  as  the  recita¬ 
tion  of  the  words  of  a  prayer.  This  difficulty  is  known 
to  Roman  writers  as  the  ligature. 

There  have  been  many  different  classifications  of 
mystical  states.  There  is  first  the  three-fold  classifica¬ 
tion  of  the  way  of  purgation,  of  illumination  and  of 
union.  This  has  the  advantage  of  simplicity,  but  it 
seems  to  have  been  used  with  considerable  differences 
of  meaning.  Scaramelli,  in  his  Direttorio  Mistico,  which 
has  been  published  in  a  much  abridged  English  edition, 
gives  a  long  and  detailed  list  of  different  states,  many  of 
which  do  not  appear  to  be  really  specifically  different. 
The  classification  I  intend  to  adopt  is  that  found  in  St 
Teresa’s  Interior  Castle,  which  is  followed  by  Father 
Poulain  in  The  Graces  of  Interior  Prayer.  The  great 
merit  of  St  Teresa’s  classification  is  that  it  proceeds 
from  clearly  distinguishable  psychological  points  of  dif¬ 
ference.  The  stages  she  distinguishes  are :  the  prayer  of 
quiet,  the  prayer  of  union,  ecstasy  and  the  spiritual 
marriage. 

The  prayer  of  quiet  is  the  first  stage  of  mystical 
prayer.  All  that  I  said  when  speaking  of  contemplation 
generally  will  be  true  of  the  prayer  of  quiet  in  particu¬ 
lar.  This  stage  of  mystical  prayer  differs  from  the  later 
ones  in  the  extent  to  which  other  mental  functions  are 
interfered  with  by  the  contemplation.  It  is  described  as 
the  fifth  mansion  of  St  Teresa’s  Interior  Castle.  This 
state  of  prayer  usually  occurs  to  a  person  who  has 
reached  the  stage  at  which  his  meditations  have  become 
the  prayer  of  simplicity.  At  first  it  comes  for  only  a  few 
seconds,  but  later  may  stay  many  hours,  even  con¬ 
tinuing  during  physical  activity.  The  contemplation  is 


MYSTICISM 


229 


accompanied  by  distractions — images  and  thoughts 
which  do  not  belong  to  the  contemplation;  and  the 
power  of  making  bodily  movements  is  not  lost,  although 
movement  usually  results  in  the  loss  of  the  state. 

St  Teresa  describes  the  prayer  of  quiet  as  follows: 

In  the  prayer  of  quiet,  when  the  water  flows  from 
the  spring  itself  and  not  through  conduits,  the  mind 
ceases  to  act ;  it  is  forced  to  do  so,  although  it  does  not 
understand  what  is  happening,  and  so  wanders  hither 
and  thither  in  bewilderment,  finding  no  place  for  rest. 
Meanwhile  the  will,  entirely  united  to  God,  is  much 
disturbed  by  the  tumult  of  the  thoughts:  no  notice, 
however,  should  be  taken  of  them,  or  they  would  cause 
a  loss  of  a  great  part  of  the  favour  the  soul  is  enjoy¬ 
ing.  Let  the  spirit  ignore  these  distractions  and  aban¬ 
don  itself  in  the  arms  of  divine  love.1 

The  next  stage  distinguished  by  St  Teresa  is  the 
prayer  of  union.  This  is  intermediate  between  the 
prayer  of  quiet  and  ecstasy.  The  emotional  experience 
is  more  intense,  distractions  are  absent,  but  neither  the 
power  of  voluntary  movement  nor  sense  perception  is 
lost.  St  Teresa  thus  describes  it: 

In  the  prayer  of  union  the  soul  is  asleep,  fast  asleep, 
as  regards  the  world  and  itself:  in  fact,  during  the 
short  time  this  state  lasts  it  is  deprived  of  all  feeling 
whatever,  being  unable  to  think  on  any  subject,  even 
if  it  wished.  No  effort  is  needed  here  to  suspend  the 
thoughts:  if  the  soul  can  love — it  knows  not  how,  nor 
whom  it  loves,  nor  what  it  desires.  In  fact,  it  has 
died  to  this  world,  to  live  more  truly  than  ever  in  God.2 

She  goes  on  to  say  that  although  disturbing  thoughts 
may  be  found  in  the  prayer  of  quiet,  they  are  never 

1  The  Interior  Castle ,  4.  in.  7.  2  Ibid.  5.  I.  5. 


230 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


found  here,  “for  neither  the  imagination,  the  under¬ 
standing,  nor  the  memory  has  power  to  hinder  the 
graces  bestowed  in  it.”  1 

The  next  stage,  that  of  ecstasy,  is  one  which  has 
attracted  much  more  attention  than  these  earlier  con¬ 
ditions  of  mystical  prayer,  since  it  has  striking  bodily 
effects  which  excited  the  wonder  of  the  contemporaries 
of  ecstatics  and  of  the  writers  of  their  lives.  Ecstasy  is 
accompanied  by  complete  loss  of  the  capacity  to  receive 
sense  impressions,  and  of  the  power  of  making  volun¬ 
tary  movements  (in  other  words,  the  body  remains  in  a 
cataleptic  condition).  It  is  stated  that  the  only  excep¬ 
tion  to  this  is  that  an  order  given  to  the  ecstatic  by  his 
spiritual  superior  is  obeyed.2  Ecstasy  is  a  state  which 
comes  on  occasionally  while  the  subject  is  experiencing 
a  less  intense  form  of  contemplation.  It  is  in  this  con¬ 
dition  that  visions  and  locutions  generally  take  place. 
The  introspective  accounts  of  ecstasy  differ  from  those 
already  given  principally  in  the  greater  clearness  of  the 
object  wThich  is  felt  to  be  perceived,  and  in  its  more 
intense  emofional  accompaniment. 

As  an  example  of  ecstasy,  we  may  take  a  present-day 
description  given  by  the  Sadhu  Sundar  Singh.3  “No 
words  are  spoken,”  he  says,  “but  I  see  all  pictured  ;Hn  a 
moment  problems  are  solved,  easily  and  with  pleasure, 
and  with  no  burden  to  my  brain.”  In  his  earlier  days 
as  a  Christian,  ecstasy  was  a  comparatively  rare  occur¬ 
rence.  Later,  although  he  did  not  know  beforehand 
when  he  would  enter  into  it,  it  became  an  almost  every- 
1  Op.  cit.  5.  i.  5. 

'  This  fact  has  been  compared  with  the  receptivity  of  the  hypno¬ 
tised  subject  to  the  commands  of  his  hypnotiser  when  he  seems 
oblivious  of  all  other  sense  impressions,  but  it  would  seem  to  be  a 
rash  conclusion  that  the  hypnotic  trance  is  physiologically  the  same 
condition  as  that  of  ecstasy. 

3  The  Sadhu ,  by  Streeter  and  Appasamy,  pp.  133,  134  and  136. 


MYSTICISM 


231 


day  experience,  unless  he  held  it  back.  Ecstasy  com¬ 
monly  ensues  after  about  twenty  minutes  of  prayer  and 
meditation.  In  this  state,  which  sometimes  lasts  for  sev¬ 
eral  hours,  he  loses  all  perception  of  the  external  world ; 
and  he  has  no  sense  of  the  lapse  of  time.  Once,  during  an 
ecstasy,  he  was  stung  all  over  with  hornets,  but  he  had 
felt  nothing.  While  in  ecstasy,  he  thinks  on  such  themes 
as  the  love  of  God,  and  at  the  same  time1  he  says  that 
he  listens  to  spirits,  especially  the  Holy  Spirit,  as  they 
talk  to  him.  An  interesting  fact  in  connection  with  the 
ecstasy  of  the  Sadhu  is  that  he  had  practised  Yoga 
before  his  conversion  to  Christianity.  He  says: 

the  great  contrast  between  the  state  of  ecstasy  and  the 
Yogic  states  which  I  cultivated  before  becoming  a 
Christian  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  Ecstasy  there  is  alwTays 
the  same  feeling  of  calm  satisfaction  and  being  at 
home,  whatever  had  been  my  state  of  mind  before 
going  into  Ecstasy.  Whereas  in  the  Yogic  state,  if 
before  the  trance  I  was  feeling  sad,  I  used  to  weep  in 
the  trance,  if  cheerful  I  would  smile. 

St  Teresa  says: 

.  .  .  when  He  intends  ravishing  the  soul  He  takes 
away  the  power  of  speech,  and  although  occasionally 
the  other  faculties  are  retained  rather  longer,  no  word 
can  be  uttered.  Sometimes  the  person  is  at  once  de¬ 
prived  of  all  the  senses,  the  hands  and  body  becoming 
as  cold  as  if  the  soul  had  fled ;  occasionally  no  breath¬ 
ing  can  be  detected.  This  condition  lasts  but  a  short 
while;  I  mean  in  the  same  degree,  for  when  this  pro¬ 
found  suspension  diminishes  the  body  seems  to  come 
to  itself  and  gain  strength  to  return  again  to  this  death 
which  gives  more  vigorous  life  to  the  soul.  This 
supreme  state  of  ecstasy  never  lasts  long,  but  although 


232  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


it  ceases,  it  leaves  the  will  so  inebriated,  and  the  mind 
so  transported  out  of  itself  that  for  a  day,  or  sometimes 
for  several  days,  such  a  person  is  incapable  of  attend¬ 
ing  to  anything  but  what  excites  the  will  to  the  love 
of  God.1 

The  Spiritual  Marriage  is  not  an  intensification  of  the 
experience  of  ecstasy  as  each  of  the  stages  of  prayer 
already  mentioned  has  been  in  some  sense  an  intensi¬ 
fication  of  the  experience  of  the  previous  one.  On  the 
contrary,  the  trances  of  the  ecstatic  state  disappear 
completely  or  nearly  completely  in  this  stage,  as  do  also 
the  imaginal  visions  which  are  a  common  accompani¬ 
ment  of  ecstasy.  At  the  same  time,  the  state  of  contem¬ 
plation,  instead  of  being  intermittent  as  hitherto, 
becomes  permanent.  There  is  also  a  strong  impulsion 
to  active  work,  wThich  is  in  marked  contrast  wfith  the 
tendency  to  abandon  activity  which  is  characteristic  of 
the  early  stages  of  the  mystical  life. 

St  Teresa  says  that  she  is 

astonished  at  seeing  that  when  the  soul  arrives  at  this 
state  it  does  not  go  into  ecstasies  except  perhaps  on 
rare  occasions — even  then  they  are  not  like  the  former 
trances  and  the  flight  of  the  spirit  and  seldom  take 
place  in  public  as  they  did  before.2 

The  permanent  intellectual  vision  she  enjoyed  dur¬ 
ing  this  state  is  thus  described : 

By  some  mysterious  manifestation  of  the  truth,  the 
three  Persons  of  the  most  Blessed  Trinity  reveal  them¬ 
selves,  preceded  by  an  illumination  wdiich  shines  on 
the  spirit  like  a  most  dazzling  cloud  of  light.  The 

1  The  Interior  Castle ,  6.  iv.  17  and  18. 

2  Ibid.  7.  hi.  10. 


MYSTICISM 


238 


three  Persons  are  distinct  from  one  another;  a  sublime 
knowledge  is  infused  into  the  soul,  imbuing  it  with  a 
certainty  of  the  truth  that  the  Three  are  of  one  sub¬ 
stance,  power,  and  knowledge  and  are  one  God.  Thus 
that  which  we  hold  as  a  doctrine  of  faith,  the  soul  now, 
so  to  speak,  understands  by  sight,  though  it  beholds 
the  Blessed  Trinity  neither  by  the  eyes  of  the  body 
nor  of  the  soul,  this  being  no  imaginary  vision.1 

Of  the  impulsion  to  activity,  she  says: 

The  most  surprising  thing  to  me  is  that  the  sorrow  and 
distress  which  such  souls  felt  because  they  could  not 
die  and  enjoy  our  Lord’s  presence  are  now  exchanged 
for  as  fervent  a  desire  of  serving  Him,  of  causing  Him 
to  be  praised,  and  of  helping  others  to  the  utmost  of 
their  power.2 

This  impulsion  to  activity  is  much  more  strongly 
emphasised  by  Mme  Guyon  in  her  description  of  her 
apostolic  state,  which  is  generally  regarded  as  equiva¬ 
lent  to  the  Spiritual  Marriage  of  St  Teresa. 

There  is  also  in  this  condition  what  appears  to  its 
subject  as  a  division  of  the  soul  by  which  distracting 
conflicts  may  consciously  occupy  the  mind  without  dis¬ 
turbing  the  peace  of  the  contemplation.  Of  this,  St 
Teresa  says: 

Thus  in  a  manner  her  soul  appeared  divided :  a  short 
time  after  God  had  done  her  this  favour,  while  under¬ 
going  great  sufferings,  she  complained  of  her  soul  as 
Martha  did  of  Mary,  reproaching  it  with  enjoying 
solitary  peace  while  leaving  her  so  full  of  troubles  and 
occupations  that  she  could  not  keep  it  company.3 

]Op.  cit.  7.  i.  9.  3 Ibid.  7.  m.  5. 

3  Ibid.  7.  i.  14.  In  this  passage  the  authoress  is  referring  to 
herself. 


234  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 
And  in  the  next  chapter: 

It  is  not  intended  that  the  powers,  senses  and  passions 
should  continually  enjoy  this  peace.  The  soul  does  so, 
indeed,  but  in  the  other  mansions  there  are  still  times 
of  struggle,  suffering,  and  fatigue,  though  as  a  general 
rule,  peace  is  not  lost  by  them  .  .  .  though  tumults 
and  wild  beasts  rage  with  great  uproar  in  the  other 
mansions,  yet  nothing  of  this  enters  the  seventh  man¬ 
sion,  nor  drives  the  soul  from  it.1 

Mme  Guyon  also  describes  a  condition  of  automatism 
in  which  actions  cease  to  be  under  the  control  of  the 
conscious  will  and  seem  to  be  directly  under  the  control 
of  God.  In  her  Torrents  she  writes: 

II  faut  se  laisser  posseder,  agir,  mouvoir  sans  resis¬ 
tance,  demeurer  dans  son  etat  naturel  et  de  consistance, 
attendant  tous  les  moments,  et  les  recevant  de  la  Provi¬ 
dence  sans  rien  augmenter  ni  diminuer,  se  laissant 
conduire  a  tout  sans  vue,  ni  raison,  ni  sans  y  penser; 
mais  comme  par  entrainement,  sans  penser  a  ce  qui  est 
de  meilleur  et  de  plus  parfait,  mais  se  laissant  aller 
comme  naturellement  a  tout  cela,  demeurant  dans 
l’etat  egal  et  de  consistance  ou  Dieu  Pa  mise,  sans  se 
mettre  en  peine  de  rien  faire;  mais  laissant  a  Dieu  le 
soin  de  faire  naitre  les  occasions  et  de  les  executer.2 

St  Teresa,  like  the  other  more  orthodox  mystics, 
makes  much  less  of  this  condition  of  automatism,  prob¬ 
ably  being  saved  from  its  exaggeration  by  the  greater 
virility  of  her  character.  She  hints,  however,  at  an  ap¬ 
proach  to  the  same  state  when  she  says:  .  .  our 

Lord  .  .  .  told  her  that  henceforth  she  was  to  care  for 

1  Op.  cit.  7.  ii.  14.  The  Seventh  Mansion,  in  this  work,  is  the 
state  of  Spiritual  Marriage. 

2  Etudes  d’histoire  et  de  psychologie  du  Mysticisme.  H.  Delacroix, 

p.  144. 


MYSTICISM 


235 


His  affairs  as  though  they  were  her  own  and  He  would 
care  for  hers.”  1  She,  like  Mine  Guyon,  seems  to  have 
written  many  of  her  books  in  a  condition  of  automatism. 

It  should  be  clear  that  it  is  extremely  unjust  to  mys¬ 
ticism  to  suppose  that  it  is  merely,  or  even  primarily, 
a  system  of  emotional  experiences  pursued  as  such  by 
the  mystic.  A  character  of  the  mystical  states  of  prayer, 
which  is  strongly  insisted  upon  by  such  writers  as  St 
Teresa,  is  the  growth  in  the  virtues,  in  humility,  in  the 
Love  of  God  and  in  spiritual  fruitfulness  found  in  the 
soul  experiencing  them.  It  is,  in  part,  this  growth  which 
is  used  by  the  director  of  the  religious  person  as  a 
criterion  to  distinguish  between  what  he  regards  as 
genuinely  religious  experiences  and  their  diabolical 
counterfeits.  Mysticism,  like  any  other  highly  emo¬ 
tional  system  of  experiences  (as,  for  example,  human 
love),  may,  indeed,  be  followed  in  such  a  way  that  the 
emotional  experiences  become  ends  in  themselves.  This, 
however,  is  the  way  of  spiritual  death  which  we  find  the 
historical  mystics  strenuously  trying  to  avoid.  Those 
who  take  this  path  degenerate  into  merely  silly  religious 
sentimentalists.  These  are  probably  at  least  as  numer¬ 
ous  as  the  greater  mystics,  only  their  names  do  not  sur¬ 
vive,  because  other  religious  people  find  nothing  of 
value  in  their  writings.  The  avoidance  of  this  path  is 
partly  provided  for  by  the  exterior  penances  of  the 
religious  mystics,  partly  by  characters  inherent  to  the 
mystic  process  itself. 

These  characters  are  what  are  called  trials  in  mystical 
theology.  These  are  the  painful  aspects  of  the  mystical 
states  of  prayer.  These  are  so  uniform  that  it  is  possible 
to  describe  the  process  of  advance  in  mystical  prayer  in 
terms  of  its  painful  aspect  alone.  This  is  what  is  done 

1  The  Interior  Castle,  7.  n.  1. 


236  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


by  St  John  of  the  Cross  in  his  Dark  Night  of  the  Soul. 
It  is  a  serious  misunderstanding  of  his  meaning  to  sup¬ 
pose  that  St  John’s  Night  of  the  Senses  and  Night  of 
the  Spirit  are  two  additional  mental  states  which  must 
be  interpolated  somewhere  between  the  states  described 
by  other  mystics  in  order  to  give  a  complete  account 
of  the  stages  of  progress  in  mystical  prayer.  There  is, 
of  course,  a  certain  amount  of  artificiality  in  attempting 
to  correlate  exactly  the  stages  of  one  mystic  with  those 
of  another.  A  very  considerable  correspondence,  how¬ 
ever,  is  to  be  found  in  the  conditions  described  by  dif¬ 
ferent  mystics,  and  an  examination  of  those  of  St  John 
of  the  Cross  shows  that  in  the  first  night  he  is  describing 
the  passage  from  ordinary  mental  prayer  to  the  prayer 
of  simplicity,  and  in  the  second  night  the  stages  of  mys¬ 
tical  prayer  which  precede  ecstasy. 

We  will  now  consider  what  can  be  said  about  the 
mystic  states  from  the  point  of  view  of  psychology.  It 
was  pointed  out  in  connection  with  mystical  conversion 
that  the  convert  was  engaged  in  trying  to  detach  his 
libido  from  the  outside  world.  This  attitude  towards 
the  outside  world  has  been  studied  by  Dr  Jung  in  con¬ 
nection  with  certain  of  the  psychoses  and  he  has  given 
to  it  the  name  introversion.  He  distinguishes  two  types 
of  men:  the  introvert  who  has  withdrawn  libido  from 
the  external  world  and  is  interested  mainly  in  thought, 
and  the  extrovert  who  is  interested  in  things,  in  action 
in  the  outside  world,  and  in  feeling  rather  than  thought. 
He  also  applies  the  words  introversion  and  extroversion 
to  the  ways  of  disposing  of  the  libido  characteristic  of 
the  introvert  and  extrovert,  respectively.  These  two  at¬ 
titudes  towards  life  may  be  characteristic  of  different 
phases  of  the  existence  of  a  single  person.  Introversion 
is  liable  to  be  determined  by  failure  to  find  satisfaction 


MYSTICISM 


237 


in  the  outside  world.  A  feeling  of  inferiority  due  to  some 
physical  defect  or  a  failure  to  find  happiness  in  love  may 
drive  a  person  to  seek  for  happiness  in  the  creations  of 
his  own  mind,  and  thus  to  become  an  introvert. 

An  extreme  form  of  introversion  is  found  in  the  very 
common  form  of  insanity  known  as  dementia  praecox. 
In  this  disease  the  patient  has  lost  all  interest  in  the 
outside  world  and  appears  to  live  entirely  in  a  world 
of  day-dreams.  Degenerative  brain  and  other  physical 
changes  take  place,  and  the  disease  ends  in  profound 
dementia.  It  is  now  stated,  however,  by  the  followers 
of  Dr  Jung,  that  dementia  praecox  can  be  treated  in  its 
early  stages  by  purely  psychical  means,  and  if  the 
patient  can  be  made  to  extrovert  his  libido,  the  de¬ 
generative  changes  do  not  take  place.  Hysteria  is  re¬ 
garded  as  a  similar  regressive  form  of  extroversion. 

Is  it  a  satisfactory  account  of  the  mystical  conversion 
to  say  that  the  subject  is  introverting  libido?  Intro¬ 
version  has  been  used  for  a  long  time  as  a  term  in 
mystical  theology,  although  it  would  be  perilous  to 
assume  that  it  has  meant  the  same  thing  as  it  does  to 
Dr  Jung.  Pseudo-Dionysius,  for  example,  describes  a 
movement  of  the  soul  as  “an  introversion  (17  els  eavrrjv 
eiVoSos)  from  things  without.”  1  Clearly  the  attitude  to¬ 
wards  the  external  world  in  the  initial  stages  of  the 
mystical  conversion  is  that  of  introversion.  It  is  pos¬ 
sible,  however,  that  the  fact  that  libido  is  directed 
towards  an  object  wdiich  is,  at  any  rate  believed  in  by 
the  mystic  as  an  external  reality,  introduces  an  essen¬ 
tial  difference  into  the  process.  Possibly  we  ought  to 
coin  a  word,  and  speak  of  deoversion.  This  process,  as 
found  in  the  greater  mystics,  appears  to  be  related 
rather  to  the  health-giving  introversion  described  by  the 

1  The  Divine  Names,  chap.  iv.  para.  9. 


238  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

analytical  psychologists  than  to  the  regressive  introver¬ 
sion  of  dementia  praecox.  It  is  followed  by  a  phase  of 
extroversion  in  the  Spiritual  Marriage,  in  which  the 
mental  growth  during  the  earlier  phase  is  made  profit¬ 
able  for  work  in  the  outside  wrnrld. 

Of  preanalytic  studies  of  mysticism  from  the  point 
of  view  of  mental  pathology,  there  is  a  considerable 
literature.  The  resemblance  between  some  of  the  phe¬ 
nomena  of  mysticism  and  the  symptoms  of  hysteria 
could  not  fail  to  attract  attention.  Janet  studied  an 
ecstatic  at  the  Salpetriere  and  concluded  that  she  was  a 
scrupuleuse  who  tended  towards  hysteria. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  fairer  account  of  the 
similarity  between  certain  phenomena  in  the  lives  of  the 
mystics  and  the  symptoms  of  hysteria  than  that  pro¬ 
vided  by  Baron  von  Hiigel  in  the  second  volume  of  The 
Mystical  Element  in  Religion .  He  takes  the  symptoms 
of  hysteria  mentioned  by  Professor  Janet  in  his  Etat 
Mental  des  Hysteriques,  and  shows  how  they  can  be 
paralleled  in  the  life  of  St  Catherine  of  Genoa,  particu¬ 
larly  during  her  last  illness.  There  is  first  the  very 
characteristic  hysterical  phenomenon  of  anaesthesia,  in 
which  cutaneous  sensibility  is  lost  over  an  area  of  the 
body.  It  is  recorded  that  St  Catherine  “would  press 
thorny  rose-twigs  in  both  her  hands,  and  this  without 
any  pain.”  1  There  is  also  often  found  amongst  hys¬ 
terics  an  exaggerated  affective  reaction  to  contact  or  to 
certain  colours.  Of  St  Catherine  it  is  recorded  that: 

in  February  or  March  1510,  “for  a  day  and  a  night,  her 
flesh  could  not  be  touched,  because  of  the  great  pain 
that  such  touching  caused  her.”  At  the  end  of  August, 
“she  was  so  sensitive,  that  it  was  impossible  to  touch 

xOp.  cit.  ii.  10,  quoting  Vita,  pp.  113  b,  142  a. 


MYSTICISM 


239 


her  very  clothes  or  the  bedstead,  or  a  single  hair  on  her 
head,  because  in  such  case  she  would  cry  out  as  though 
she  had  been  grievously  wounded.”  1 

Similarly,  in  her  reaction  to  colours  we  find  that  she 
cannot  bear  the  continued  presence  in  her  room  of  her 
physician  in  his  red  robes.2 

He  instances  too,  as  phenomena  found  in  St  Cathe¬ 
rine’s  long  illness  which  may  be  paralleled  in  Janet’s 
account  of  hysteria: 

the  inability  to  stand  or  walk,  with  the  conservation  at 
times,  of  the  power  to  crawl;  the  acceptance,  followed 
by  the  rejection,  of  food,  because  of  certain  spasms  in 
the  throat  or  stomach,  and  the  curious,  mentally  ex¬ 
plicable,  exceptions  to  this  incapacity;  3  the.sense,  even 
at  other  times,  of  strangulation;  heart  palpitations, 
fever  heats,  strange  haemorrhages  from  the  stomach  or 
even  from  the  lung;  red  patches  on  the  skin  and  emo¬ 
tional  jaundice  all  over  it; 

peculiar  attacks  of  fixity  from  which  she  must  be  roused 
if  she  is  not  to  suffer  in  consequence  of  them;  a  con¬ 
sciousness  of  possessing  an  extraordinary  fineness  of 
discrimination  between  sensibly  identical  objects;  feel¬ 
ings  of  criminality  and  of  being  already  dead;  and  an 
apparent  loss  of  social  feelings  shown  by  her  absence 
of  emotion  at  the  deaths  of  her  brother  and  sister,  com¬ 
bined  with  an  extraordinary  dependence  on  and  claim- 
fulness  towards  her  confessor,  suggesting  the  attach¬ 
ment  of  the  hysterical  patient  to  her  physician.4 

1  Op.  cit.  ii.  10,  quoting  Vita,  pp.  113  b,  142  a. 

2  Op.  cit.  ii.  12. 

3  An  example  of  this  is  that  in  the  long  fasts  which  took  place 
earlier  in  her  life,  any  attempt  made  by  St  Catherine  to  take  food 
was  followed  at  once  by  vomiting;  yet  she  was  able  to  receive  and 
to  retain  the  host  at  Communion. 

4  The  Mystical  Element  in  Religion,  n.  pp.  24,  25. 


240 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


There  seems  no  sufficient  ground  for  supposing  that 
mysticism  is  merely  hysteria  misunderstood  by  a  super¬ 
stitious  and  wonder-loving  age,  but  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  certain  forms  of  mysticism  and  hysteria  are 
on  their  psycho-physical  side  closely  related.  Possibly 
the  extent  of  their  connection  is  that  both  are  charac¬ 
terised  by  a  dissociation  of  personality,  and  that  the 
symptoms  they  have  in  common  are  the  symptoms  of 
this  dissociation.  At  the  same  time,  it  must  be  noticed 
that  St  Catherine  of  Genoa  is  a  mystic  in  whom  the 
relationship  is  particularly  marked,  for  she  was  suffer¬ 
ing  at  the  end  of  her  life  from  a  psychogenic  disease,  a 
condition  which  is  by  no  means  universal  amongst 
mystics.  If  the  introversion  account  of  mysticism  is  on 
the  right  lines,  it  would  be  reasonable  to  expect  mys¬ 
ticism  on  its  psycho-physical  side  to  be  related  to  de¬ 
mentia  praecox  rather  than  with  hysteria,  the  disorder 
attributed  to  regressive  extroversion.  We  may  notice, 
too,  that  St  Catherine  appears  to  have  been  extroverted 
during  the  whole  of  her  mystical  life,  for  it  was  spent  in 
active  work  in  a  hospital  at  Genoa,  It  was  seen  that  in 
the  mysticism  of  St  Teresa,  a  phase  of  God-centred  in¬ 
troversion  was  followed  by  a  phase  of  God-inspired 
extroversion  (the  Spiritual  Marriage)  but  that  the  for¬ 
mer  phase  was  the  longer  in  time.  Possibly  a  distinction 
ought  to  be  made  between  mysticism  of  this  type  and 
mysticism  in  which  the  extroversion  phase  is  the  domi¬ 
nant  one,  and  St  Catherine  of  Genoa  should  be  placed 
in  th$  latter  class.  This  is  only  a  suggestion  which  would 
require  a  more  extended  study  of  the  subject  for  its 
substantiation. 

It  is  customary,  before  leaving  the  subject  of  mys¬ 
ticism  to  discuss  its  value.  Our  valuation  of  it  must 
depend  entirely  on  our  attitude  towards  religion  as  a 


MYSTICISM 


241 


whole.  If  we  judge  it  from  a  this- world  point  of  view, 
we  must  remember  that  for  the  mystic  the  alternative 
is  probably  mental  ill-health;  even  if  we  do  not  like 
mystics,  we  certainly  prefer  them  to  lunatics.  It  is  true 
that  mysticism  tends  often  to  incapacitate  its  subject 
for  activity  in  this  world,  but  even  on  this  score  it  may 
be  justified  if  we  look  to  the  life  of  guided  activity  which 
is  its  end,  and  not  to  the  stage  of  turning  away  from  the 
world  which  is  only  preparatory  to  that  end.  From  the 
mystic’s  own  point  of  view,  however,  these  considera¬ 
tions  are  very  largely  irrelevant.  If  man’s  highest 
activity  is  to  love  God,  mysticism  may  have  a  value  of 
its  own  entirely  independent  of  any  usefulness  it  is 
found  to  have  in  this  world. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 

Although  one  is  sometimes  tempted  to  complain  that 
in  certain  branches  of  the  study  of  the  psychology  of 
religion,  speculation  tends  to  replace  careful  observa¬ 
tion,  this  is  not  generally  true  of  our  subject.  The  diffi¬ 
culties  in  the  way  of  continuous  observation  of  highly 
religious  persons,  such  as  would  be  required  for  scien¬ 
tific  study,  have  made  it  necessary  for  writers  generally 
to  avail  themselves  of  such  historical  material  as  auto¬ 
biographies  or  the  contemporary  but  incomplete  evi¬ 
dence  provided  by  the  questionnaire.  At  the  same  time,- 
more  direct  and  more  satisfactory  methods  of  approach 
are  sometimes  found  to  be  available.  The  most  inter¬ 
esting  example  of  such  a  direct  study  is  to  be  found  in 
an  account  entitled  Une  Mystique  Moderne,  by  Flour¬ 
noy.1  Since  this  work  appeared  in  a  Swiss  psycho¬ 
logical  publication,  which  is  not  generally  accessible  to 
English  readers,  I  propose  to  give  in  the  present  chapter 
a  short  summary  of  M.  Flournoy’s  observations  and 
conclusions,  both  for  their  very  great  intrinsic  interest, 
and  for  the  light  they  throw  on  the  problems  which  have 
already  been  discussed. 

The  subject  of  these  observations  (whom  Flournoy 
calls  Mile  Ve)  was  a  Swiss  lady  aged  just  over  fifty 
years,  directress  of  a  Protestant  school  for  young  girls. 
She  developed  ecstatic  religious  experiences  while  she 
was  under  the  observation  of  Flournoy,  and  wrote  ac- 

1  Archives  de  Psychologie ,  1915. 

242 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


243 


counts  of  them  which  show  great  psychological  insight. 
Later,  she  lost  the  ecstatic  form  of  religious  experience, 
at  about  the  time  of  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War. 
It  would  be  of  great  interest  to  know  the  details  of  her 
spiritual  history  subsequent  to  1915,  but  the  regretted 
death  of  M.  Flournoy  last  year  seems  to  make  that 
impossible. 

In  order  to  understand  the  mental  history  of  Mile  Ve 
it  is  necessary  to  give  a  brief  account  of  her  life,  men¬ 
tioning  circumstances  in  it  which  convention  would 
require  us  to  omit.  Such  omission,  however,  would 
involve  a  radical  falsification  of  the  account  of  the 
forces  which  combined  to  produce  her  character  as  it 
is  to  be  found  at  the  onset  of  her  mystical  life. 

She  was  born  in  1863.  Her  father  was  a  schoolmaster, 
who  was  deeply  religious  and  of  high  moral  character. 
She  had  a  great  attachment  for  him,  and  this  attach¬ 
ment  had  a  profound  influence  on  her  later  life.  Her 
mother  was  neurotic  and  played  a  part  comparatively 
unimportant  in  the  development  of  the  girl’s  emotional 
life.  Amongst  the  influences  of  childhood  must  be  men¬ 
tioned  her  initiation  by  a  nurse  into  habits  of  self-abuse 
for  the  purpose  of  helping  her  to  fall  asleep.  This  later 
necessitated  years  of  struggle  and  humiliation  in  order 
to  free  herself  from  the  habit,  which  has  always  since 
appeared  to  her  as  the  sin  par  excellence.  She  also 
suffered  from  a  feeling  of  inferiority  because  she  was  not 
pretty  like  her  sisters,  and  she  often  heard  people  say 
that  she  was  awkward  and  unattractive.  This  drove  her 
into  day-dreams,  in  which  she  tasted  all  the  advantages 
of  which  she  was  deprived  in  reality.  She  hated  dolls, 
and  preferred  the  violent  games  of  boys. 

The  pietism  of  her  father  led  him  to  keep  her  in  a 
state  of  complete  ignorance  of  sexual  matters.  At  the 


2U  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

age  of  seventeen  and  a  half,  she  was  the  victim  of  an 
assault  by  a  man.  This  terrible  experience  was  made 
worse  for  her  by  the  fact  that  she  could  tell  no  one  about 
it,  and  that  she  developed  the  conviction  that  she  had 
been  guilty  of  an  unpardonable  fault.  While  the  whole 
of  the  character  she  owed  to  her  moral  and  religious 
training  revolted  against  the  assault,  it  also  awakened 
in  her  lower  nature  a  passion  which  was  purely  animal. 
These  two  ways  of  reacting  to  her  experience  started  a 
mental  conflict  which  remained  with  her.  For  some 
years,  the  animal  part  of  her  nature  seems  to  have  re¬ 
mained  in  the  ascendant,  while  she  says:  “De  mon  sub- 
conscient  reste  plus  religieux  que  je  ne  le  croyais,  mon- 
taient  tout  a  coup  des  bouffees  d’une  piete  intense,  mys¬ 
tique,  et  passionnee.”  1  In  the  forefront  of  her  con¬ 
sciousness,  however,  she  felt  revolt  against  a  God  who 
had  allowed  her  life  to  be  devastated  by  the  sin  of 
another,  and  whose  omnipotence  had  not  intervened  in 
her  favour. 

Later  in  her  life,  her  religious  and  moral  nature  re¬ 
gained  the  upper  hand.  Although  this  appears  to  have 
been  a  continuous  process,  she  made  a  definite  step  in 
the  reconquest  of  herself  in  her  thirtieth  year,  which  she 
sometimes  regards  as  her  conversion.  After  this  time 
her  previous  sentiment  against  God  was  transferred  to 
the  human  author  of  her  trouble,  whom  she  refused  ever 
to  forgive.  Although,  at  her  conversion,  the  victory  was 
won  for  the  moral  element  of  her  character,  her  mental 
conflict  was  not  over.  The  sensual  and  impure  part  of 
her  nature  was  now  normally  repressed,  but  she  was  in 
a  condition  of  partial  dissociation  of  personality.  Her 
animal  nature  (which  Mile  Ve  calls  B)  still  took  pos¬ 
session  of  her  for  a  few  days  several  times  in  the  course 

1Op.  cit.  p.  21. 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


215 


of  a  year.  During  this  time  she  was  the  victim  of 
sensual  imaginings  and  dreams.  She  felt  as  if  she  were 
once  more  adolescent,  and  despised  the  cold  principles 
of  religion  and  morality  which  were  sacred  to  her  when 
she  was  in  her  normal  state  (A).  She  wTas  able  while  in 
the  state  B  to  prevent  herself  from  committing  any 
actions  which  would  cause  scandal,  but  her  change  in 
face  and  manner  attracted  the  attention  of  those  who 
knew  her  well,  although  they  had  no  knowledge  of  its 
real  meaning.  These  onsets  of  the  state  B  were  in¬ 
tensely  repugnant  to  her  in  her  normal  condition.  This 
was  not  a  condition  of  genuine  double  personality,  since 
there  was  no  discontinuity  of  consciousness  or  of 
memory  between  her  two  states.  It  may  best  be  de¬ 
scribed  as  a  partial  dissociation  of  personality. 

She  first  came  under  the  observation  of  Flournoy  in 
the  December  of  1910,  when  she  consulted  him  about 
the  trouble  of  these  intervals  of  dominance  of  her  second 
personality.  Except  for  these,  she  w'as  in  perfect  health 
both  physically  and  mentally.  She  had  a  tendency 
towards  automatism  and  had  been  successful  in  her 
youth  in  automatic  writing  and  other  mediumistic  phe¬ 
nomena,  but  she  had  given  them  up  and  was  strongly 
averse  to  any  practice  which  tended  to  weaken  the  con¬ 
trol  of  the  personal  consciousness.  Apart  from  these 
there  was  nothing  about  her  which  suggested  neurosis. 
Intelligent  and  cultivated,  she  had  an  energetic  will  and 
much  practical  good  sense.  Flournoy  insists  that  she 
had  none  of  the  symptoms  of  hysteria  or  other  mental 
weaknesses  which  are  supposed  to  be  associated  with 
mysticism,  and  had  the  ordinary  healthy-minded  per¬ 
son’s  contempt  for  les  maladies  d’ imagination. 

He  allowed  her  to  open  herself  freely  to  him,  and  gave 


246 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


her  advice  with  the  intention  of  lessening  her  self- 
accusation.  She  became  better  but  not  cured.  Later, 
he  treated  her  by  suggestion,  both  in  a  condition  of  light 
and  deep  hypnosis,  and  helped  her  to  unveil  her  con¬ 
flicts  by  a  small  amount  of  psychoanalysis.  After  her 
treatment  by  deep  hypnosis,  she  found  herself  lapsing 
into  an  attitude  of  dependence  on  Flournoy  (the  posi¬ 
tive  transference  of  the  psychoanalysts)  and  with  char¬ 
acteristic  independence  she  refused  to  continue  this 
treatment.  She  still  suffered  from  her  second  per¬ 
sonality,  although  the  attacks  became  less  frequent, 
and  she  found  that  the  unbosoming  of  herself  to  Flour¬ 
noy  and  his  sympathy  and  help  gave  her  moral  and 
Christian  personality,  confidence  and  strength. 

There  was  also  at  this  time  in  her  life  a  present  con¬ 
flict  whose  solution  may  well  have  been  connected  with 
the  beginning  of  her  mystical  life.  She  had  formed  a 
friendship  with  M.  Y.,  an  amateur  artist  and  man  of 
letters.  This  friendship  had  become  dangerously  emo¬ 
tional,  and  she  found  a  peculiar  charm  in  the  freedom 
and  intimacy  of  his  letters  to  her.  M.  Y.,  however,  was 
married,  and  the  conscience  of  Mile  Ve  reproached  her 
severely  for  this  attachment,  especially  since  in  her  evil 
phases  he  was  identified  with  the  man  of  the  incident 
in  her  eighteenth  year.  In  July  of  1912,  she  broke  off 
this  intimacy  completely  and  irrevocably  at  the  cost  of 
great  mental  pain. 

“Depuis  que  cette  rupture  est  consommee,”  she  writes 
two  years  later,  “j’ai  realise  combien  plus  facile  m’est 
devenu  le  combat  contre  les  instincts  inferieurs  de  ma 
nature.  .  .  .  Privee  de  F  affection  ou  j’avais  mis  le  meil- 
leur  de  mon  ame,  j’ai  appris  ce  que  c’est  que  la  soif  de 
F  amour  eternel  et  seul  fidele  a  lui-meme.  Comme  un 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


247 


enfant  blesse  qui  ne  trouve  la  paix  que  dans  les  bras 
de  sa  mere,  ce  n’est  que  dans  les  bras  de  Dieu  que  j’ai 
pu  etre  consolee  de  la  blessure  que  m’avait  fait  un 
homme.  .  .  1 

The  libido  which  had  been  freed  from  its  earthly  object 
was  ready  to  turn  itself  towards  God  with  a  complete¬ 
ness  which  had  hitherto  been  impossible. 

Earlier  in  her  life  there  had  been  a  time  when  she  had 
a  foretaste  of  the  mystical  experience,  for  in  a  diary  of 
1896  and  1897  she  describes  experiences  which  she  later 
recognised  to  be  of  the  same  order  as  her  more  recent 
ones.  On  the  13th  of  December,  1896,  she  wrote: 

Tu  m’as  fait,  une  fois  de  nouveau,  sentir  Ta  presence 
d'une  fagon  extraordinaire;  je  ne  sais  que  dire  et  com¬ 
ment  le  dire. 

On  the  18th  of  February  in  the  following  year: 

Comment  dire  ce  que  mon  ame  a  traverse  ce  matin, 
comme  je  venais  de  m’eveiller!  Dieu  m’a  prise  un 
moment  tout  entiere  a  Lui,  je  ne  sais  comment,  mais 
j’ai  senti  sa  presence. 

In  May  of  the  same  year: 

J’ai  si  soif  d’amour  humain!  C’est  un  peche  que  de  ne 
pouvoir  etre  satisfaite  de  ce  qui  m’est  offert  d’amour 
divin. 

And  a  fortnight  later: 

Tu  m’as  fait  la  glorieuse  grace  de  me  faire  sentir  ta 
presence  .  .  .  un  instant  seulement.2 

Possibly  she  is  describing  here  what  has  traditionally 
been  called  the  prayer  of  quiet.  If  so,  the  passage  from 
this  to  her  later  experiences  seems  not  to  have  been 
continuous,  for  the  occurrence  of  this  earlier  experience 

1Op.  cit.  p.  34.  2  Ibid.  p.  24. 


248  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 

became  almost  effaced  from  her  memory.  It  seems 
reasonable  to  surmise  that  it  ceased  while,  in  her  in¬ 
timacy  with  M.  Y.,  she  was  finding  satisfaction  in  the 
amour  humain  for  which  she  had  thirsted.  On  re-read¬ 
ing  this  passage  in  her  diary,  during  the  time  of  her 
ecstasies,  she  was  shocked  by  the  conventionality  of  its 
thought  and  expression,  and  said  that  it  seemed  to  her 
as  if  she  had  at  that  time  been  worshipping  “un  petit 
bon  Dieu  de  platre  avec  une  robe  rose  ou  bleue.” 

It  was  during  the  autumn  of  1912  that  Mile  Ye  began 
to  have  the  first  experience  which  led  up  to  her  later 
ecstasies.  It  took  the  form  of  what  the  older  mystics 
would  have  called  an  intellectual  vision  of  an  unseen 
friend  whose  presence  brought  her  peace  and  courage. 
On  the  12th  of  November,  1912,  she  writes: 

Je  ne  vois  ni  n’entends  rien,  mais  je  sais  qu’il  est  la,  au 
calme  et  au  repos  delicieux  qui  m’envahissent.  Je  ne 
sais  s'il  a  un  corps;  il  n’est  en  aucune  fagon  pergu  par 
mes  sens,  sinon  que  je  crois  Tentendre  parler,  mais  d’une 
voix  tout  interieure.  ...  II  vient  ordinairement  le  soir, 
avant  que  je  m’endorme;  mais  pas  tous  les  soirs. 
Quelque  chose  de  tres  fort  et  surtout  de  tres  calme,  vient 
de  lui  a  moi.1 

She  talked  freely  to  the  presence  and  although  he  spoke 
little  she  felt  that  he  understood  her  completely.  Some¬ 
times  he  reminded  her  of  her  father,  but  not  altogether. 
He  seemed  younger,  and  she  spoke  to  him  about  things 
on  which  she  had  been  reticent  with  her  father.  At  the 
same  time,  although  she  cherished  the  experience  be¬ 
cause  of  the  happiness  it  brought  her,  she  retained  a 
critical  attitude  towards  it.  She  seems  to  have  looked 
upon  it  as  a  new  dissociation  of  her  personality,  but  as 
one  which  was  superior  to  her  conscious  self.  Once  only 

1  Op.  cit.  pp.  41  and  42. 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


249 


she  speculated  as  to  the  possibility  that  it  was  a  personal 
revelation  of  Christ,  but  generally  her  intellectual  atti¬ 
tude  towards  it  was  analytic  and  critical,  although  she 
was  content  emotionally  to  accept  the  peace  and 
strength  which  it  brought  her. 

Flournoy  considers  that  the  psychological  elements 
from  which  this  phantom  was  built  up  were  four.  First, 
the  idealised  memory  of  her  father ;  secondly,  the  sug¬ 
gestions  of  serenity,  courage,  self-mastery,  etc.,  which 
she  had  received  from  Flournoy  himself ;  thirdly,  those 
examples  of  humanity  at  its  best  which  had  most  struck 
her  in  the  course  of  her  reading,  such  as  Duperrut, 
Frommel,  etc.;  and  lastly,  all  her  Christian  instruction 
and  faith.  The  figure  never  became  more  than  a  feeling 
of  a  presence,  and  it  was  sometimes  absent  for  long 
periods,  always  during  the  now  less  frequent  phases  of 
her  evil  personality.  It  was  ordinarily  located  on  the 
left.  Its  appearance  was  always  accompanied  by  a 
feeling  of  well-being,  and  also  occasionally  by  numbness 
of  the  extremities.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  she 
was  unable  to  call  up  the  presence  by  voluntary  effort ; 
on  the  contrary,  an  attempt  to  make  it  more  tangible 
tended  to  result  in  its  disappearance. 

This  intermittent  presence  of  her  spiritual  friend 
lasted  for  about  six  months,  at  the  end  of  which  the  ex¬ 
perience  suddenly  changed  its  nature  so  completely  that 
she  felt  it  to  be  something  entirely  new  in  its  nature  and 
genuinely  divine.  It  was  on  the  2nd  of  March,  1913, 
that  the  feeling  of  presence  passed  into  the  experience 
of  ecstasy.  This  followed  a  series  of  undisturbed  and 
dreamless  nights.  On  this  night  she  lay  down  and, 
realising  that  she  was  not  going  to  sleep,  she  made  up 
her  mind  to  try  as  hard  as  she  could  to  call  up  her 
“meilleur  autre.”  She  concentrated  her  thought  and 


250 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


will  on  this  object,  remaining  with  eyes  closed,  and  try¬ 
ing  with  all  her  power  to  avoid  distraction.  She  was  on 
the  point  of  giving  up  the  effort  as  useless,  when  she 
felt  a  sudden  loss  of  power  and  wTill  to  move  her  limbs, 
and  a  sensation  of  cold  combined  with  a  pleasant  numb¬ 
ness.  Then  she  felt  the  presence  cross  her  room  from 
the  door  to  the  bed.  She  thus  describes  the  experience 
which  followed: 

J’avais  hier  l’impression  que  mon  etre  spirituel  etait 
libre  des  liens  qui  l’enchainent  a  la  matiere  et  qu’il 
emergeait  dans  une  autre  economie.  Je  n’ai  pas  eu  la 
perception  d'un  dialogue  meme  d’un  monologue  vrai- 
ment  parle,  mais  d’une  sorte  de  liberation,  parce  qu’il 
etait  venu  et  que  je  n’avais  plus  conscience  de  mon  moi 
limit  e  et  enserre  par  la  matiere.  Sans  effort  j’etais 
comme  consciente  d’une  autre  realite  essentielle  et  im- 
muable.  Le  mot  de  St-Paul  me  vient  a  la  pensee:  “Je 
fus  ravi  en  esprit,  si  c’est  dans  mon  corps  ou  hors  de 
mon  corps  je  ne  sais,  Dieu  le  sait.” 

Je  n’ai  rien  vu,  rien  entendu,  je  n’etais  ni  endormie, 
ni  evanouie,  et  pourtant  j’etais  ailleurs  et  j’etais  autre.1 

- Lorsque  je  repris  conscience  de  mon  moi  habituel, 

je  me  sentis  tres  faible,  comme  bouleversee  par  une  tres 
forte  emotion,  mais  ayant  beaucoup  de  peine  a  realiser 
et  a  formuler  ce  qui  s’etait  passe.  Je  ne  le  saisis  que  par 
1' impression  laissee,  une  sorte  de  certitude  absolue 

DE  LA  REALITE  DU  DIVIN. 

II  me  semble  aujourd’hui  que  la  vie  est  facile  a 
supporter  vaillamment,  parce  que  j’ai  realise  comme 
jamais  encore  qu’elle  n’est  pas  tout,  qu’elle  n’est  qu’une 
partie  de  la  realite  derniere.2 

She  w^as  unable  to  say  how  long  the  experience  lasted, 
whether  for  a  minute  or  for  an  hour.  She  insists  (as  do 

1  The  three  hyphens  which  follow  represent  a  period  of  loss  of 
consciousness  in  ecstasy. 

2  Op.  cit.  pp.  61  and  62. 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


251 


many  of  the  mystics)  on  the  indescribability  of  her  ex¬ 
perience — “Les  mots  ne  sont  pas  faits  pour  decrire  ce 
que  j’ai  eprouve,  ou  subi,  ou  experience.”  1  She  states 
that  she  was  neither  conscious  of  her  body  nor  of  her 
own  identity;  above  all,  the  impression  of  time  was  lost, 
she  seemed  to  be  plunged  in  timelessness,  in  eternity. 
Combined  with  this  she  felt  the  essential  reality  of  a 
presence  which  she  was  disposed  to  call  that  of  the  Life 
of  God.  While  hearing  and  seeing  nothing,  she  felt  this 
presence  about  her  and  in  her.  “C’etait  a  la  fois  une 
immensite  et  une  intimite.”  2  Although  quickly  giving 
the  name  of  God  to  this  enveloping  presence,  she  did 
not  feel  as  if  she  were  going  through  any  ordinary  relig¬ 
ious  experience.  It  was  both  more  overpowering  and 
less  precise  than  what  she  had  previously  regarded  as 
her  religious  experiences. 

This  ecstatic  experience  recurred  at  irregular  inter¬ 
vals  until  the  end  of  the  July  of  the  following  year,  the 
total  number  of  its  recurrences  being  thirty-one.  At 
Flournoy’s  request,  she  made  complete  notes  of  these  ex¬ 
periences  at  the  time  of  their  occurrence.  Before  the  end 
of  the  period  over  which  the  ecstasies  were  distributed, 
Flournoy  sent  her  back  her  earliest  records,  and  in  her 
comments  on  these  we  can  read  most  easily  the  record  of 
her  spiritual  development  during  this  time.  First  she 
notices  that  her  experience  has  so  modified  the  tradi¬ 
tional  element  in  her  religious  belief  that  her  former 
faith  seems  to  her  to  have  been  limited  and  formal. 

Elle  a  inaugure  en  moi  une  nouvelle  conception  du  di- 
vin,  a  laquelle  je  ne  suis  pas  arrivee  d’un  bond,  mais  qui 
me  semble  maintenant  avoir  consiste  a  clegager  l’idee  de 
Dieu  de  toute  entrave  dogmatique,  de  toute  formule 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  63. 


252 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


immuable.  Avant  cela,  j ’avals  de  Dieu  une  idee  tou- 
jours  la  meme  (cut  and  dried,  comme  disent  les 
Anglais) ;  et  je  sens  bien,  maintenant,  combien  limitee, 
etriquee,  etait  cette  conception.1 

She  feels  herself  so  completely  unable  to  describe  her 
experience  that  she  does  not  attempt  it.  She  can  only 
characterise  it  as  a  new  emotion  accompanied  by  the 
triumphant  and  unreasoning  conviction  that  it  is  con¬ 
tact  with  that  which  is.  It  appears  to  her  as  immediate 
contact  with  what  she  feels  as  a  divine  force. 

But  she  also  has  a  reaction  against  this  experience. 
She  is  puzzled  and  even  indignant  to  find  herself  the 
sole  depositary  of  a  mystery ;  to  find  how  powerless  her 
experience  leaves  her  to  communicate  any  of  its  refresh¬ 
ment  to  the  discouraged  and  thirsting  souls  with  whom 
she  comes  into  daily  contact.  This  feeling  is  the  feature 
of  her  mysticism  which  most  sharply  separates  her  from 
the  traditional  attitude  towards  such  experiences.  She 
trembles  when  she  finds  this  thought  apparently  lead¬ 
ing  her  in  the  direction  of  the  denial  of  God’s  revelation 
to  her  soul. 

Mais  comment  serais- je  eternellement  satisfaite  de  ce 
qui  n’est  pas  transmissible?  Ce  serait  redescendre,  loin 
de  la  route  ou  Christ  a  marche;  ce  serait  revenir  a  un 
Dieu  qui  favorise  quelques  elus — et  de  ces  elus  je  ne 
veux  pas  etre !  2 

She  cannot  really  doubt  that  her  experience  is  from 
above,  for  it  has  caused  her  to  make  an  advance  she 
would  not  otherwise  have  made,  but  she  feels  that  it  is 
necessary  for  her  to  go  further,  from  the  experience  to 
God  who  gives  and  communicates  Himself.  She  recog¬ 
nises  the  value  of  the  joy  and  certainty  which  her  experi- 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  47.  2  Ibid.  p.  148. 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


OKO 

-■)o 

ences  have  brought  her,  and  of  the  substitution  of 
immediate  knowledge  of  the  divine  for  a  merely  formal 
and  traditional  knowledge.  “Mais  maintenant,”  she 
writes  in  the  May  of  1914,  “oh!  que  j’ai  soif  de  realiser 
V amour  divin,  comme  j’ai  realise  la  realite  divine!”  1 

This  perplexity  did  not  disappear  as  time  went  on, 
and  the  ecstasies  became  less  frequent.  On  one  night 
in  July  her  thoughts  converged  towards  the  idea  of  a 
sacrifice  of  herself;  for  a  moment  the  conviction  formed 
itself  that  she  would  only  re-find  God  by  dying  to  her¬ 
self.  This  was  an  idea  which  she  found  repellent,  and 
she  rebelled  against  the  idea  of  making  this  sacrifice  for 
which  God  was  waiting  before  He  would  again  reveal 
Himself  as  before.  She  was  doubtful  whether  she  was 
not  being  misled  by  her  intense  desire  for  her  former 
experience  to  arrive  at  an  idea  of  meritorious  sacrifice. 
She  still  suffered  occasionally  from  evil  dreams  at  the 
time  of  her  periods,  but  these  appear  only  to  have  been 
faint  shadows  of  the  old  attacks  of  her  evil  personality. 
On  the  31st  of  July,  1914,  she  experienced  her  last 
ecstasy;  the  events  which  followed  that  date  (felt 
keenly  by  an  inhabitant  of  a  neutral  country  with 
friends  and  relatives  in  both  camps)  confirmed  her  in 
the  tendency  of  her  mystical  experience  to  believe  that 
God  is  not  in  this  world.  More  than  ever,  she  felt  led 
to  seek  for  God,  not  in  mystical  experience,  but  in  an 
energetic  effort  of  will. 

What  in  the  end  her  religious  experiences  meant  for 
her,  and  what  was  their  value  for  her  life,  can  best  be 
told  in  her  own  wTords: 

J’ai  l’impression  ce  soir  que  pour  moi  la  page  se  tourne 
de  nouveau.  Le  temps  de  la  vie  surtout  personnelle  est 
passe.  .  .  .  J’ai  l’impression  d’achever  maintenant  un 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  148. 


254 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


cycle  de  ma  vie  religieuse.  Sous  la  poussee  puissante 
de  l’Experience  mon  ame  a  fait  un  grand  pas  vers  plus 
de  spirituality.  Dieu  a  cesse  pour  moi  d’etre  limite  et 
circonscrit  dans  l’histoire  de  sa  revelation.  Comme  le 
soleil,  II  est  eleve  sur  l’horizon  de  mon  ame,  jusqu’a 
remplir  tout,  par  dela  ce  qui  n’est  qu’humain,  le  bien  et 
le  mal,  le  temps  et  l’espace.  ...  II  faut  aller  plus  loin. 
Apres  avoir  retrouve  sur  la  montagne,  d’abord  la 
lumiere,  puis  le  Dieu  qui  est  la  Lumiere  et  la  Vie  et 
P Amour,  il  faut  maintenant  redescendre  dans  la  plaine 
ou  Ton  souffre,  et  apprendre,  comme  je  ne  l’ai  encore 
jamais  fait  peut-etre,  a  donner  ma  vie.  .  .  .  Je  n’ai  pas 
{’impression  que  la  vie  mystique  soit  dans  une  periode 
ascendante  en  moi:  l’appel  a  l’activite  pratique,  a  la 
presence  d’esprit  et  au  bon  sens,  est  trop  urgent.  Je 
suis  plongee  dans  des  discussions  d’economie  domes- 
tique  (et  d’economie  tout  court),  dans  des  questions  de 
salaire  et  de  nourriture.  .  .  J 

One  is  tempted  to  ask  what,  in  traditional  mysticism, 
vTould  correspond  to  Mile  Ve’s  change  from  her  ecstatic 
phase  to  this  phase  of  religiously  directed  activity.  Even 
the  language  in  which  she  describes  it  recalls  forcibly 
the  mystic  phase  known  as  the  Spiritual  Marriage. 
Flournoy  scouts  this  idea  and  prefers  to  describe  it  as 
a  reaction  from  an  introverted  to  an  extroverted  state. 
This,  however,  is  exactly  what,  in  psychological  terms, 
the  Spiritual  Marriage  is.  It  is  the  change  from  an  intro¬ 
verted  condition  dominated  by  the  consciousness  of  the 
presence  of  God,  to  an  extroverted  condition  similarly 
dominated.  On  the  other  hand,  it  might  be  argued  from 
the  point  of  view  of  traditional  mysticism  that  Mile  Ve 
lost  the  highest  gifts  of  mysticism  through  her  failure 
to  respond  to  the  demand  for  a  complete  dying  to  her - 
self.  Finally,  of  course,  an  opponent  of  mysticism  might 

1  Op.  cit.  pp.  159,  160. 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


255 


argue  that  she  emerged  from  the  mystical  condition 
through  the  strength  of  her  own  moral  nature  which  led 
her  to  see  the  moral  worthlessness  of  a  mere  emotional 
experience,  particularly  wrhen  the  outbreak  of  war  led 
her  to  feel  more  urgently  the  call  to  action.  This  would 
indeed  make  it  necessary  to  ignore  her  own  repeated 
affirmations  of  the  permanent  value  of  her  mystical  ex¬ 
perience  to  her  later  active  life.  This,  however,  is  a 
question  which  we  could  not  even  hope  to  be  able  to 
decide  without  the  additional  data  provided  by  a  knowl¬ 
edge  of  her  later  mental  and  religious  development. 

A  point  of  importance  illustrated  by  Mile  Ye’s  mys¬ 
ticism  is  the  connection  between  the  mystical  experi¬ 
ences  and  the  sex-instinct.  We  may  remind  ourselves 
of  the  facts  of  Mile  Ye’s  sexual  history.  The  evil  phases 
which  resulted  from  a  partial  dissociation  of  personality 
consequent  on  her  early  assault,  were  accompanied  by 
outbreaks  of  autoeroticism  and  sexual  dreams.  These 
wTere  liable  to  occur  at  her  menses  even  during  the  time 
of  her  ecstasies.  Her  mother  played  a  negligible  part  in 
her  life,  but  her  affection  for  her  father  produced  what 
Dr  Jung  calls  an  Electra-Complex.  The  fixation  on  one 
of  the  parents  is  commonly  found  to  be  accompanied 
by  a  tendency  to  homosexuality,  which  is  also  to  be 
found  in  Mile  Ye.  She  states  that  until  her  intimacy 
with  M.  Y.,  although  she  had  friendships  with  men, 
passion  and  jealousy  were  only  present  in  her  relation¬ 
ships  with  women. 

It  was  pointed  out  that  this  relationship  to  her  father 
seems  to  have  been  one  psychological  ingredient  in  her 
earlier  experience  of  the  Spiritual  Friend.  The  other 
element  of  importance  in  her  emotional  life  wras  this 
strongly  repressed  sexuality  which  found  its  outlet  in 
her  state  ( B ).  That  this  was  playing  a  part  in  her 


256 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


mystical  experience  was  a  conclusion  which  Mile  Ve  was 
very  unwilling  to  admit.  The  severity  of  her  repression 
of  sexual  things  itself  tended  to  increase  this  unwilling¬ 
ness.  Sex  and  religion  had  always  appeared  to  her  to 
be  poles  apart.  Yet  she  was  puzzled  and  distressed  to 
find  that  the  immediate  moral  and  spiritual  effect  of  the 
experience  itself  was  followed  by  an  excitement  which 
she  recognised  as  sexual,  sometimes  violent  and  some¬ 
times  immediately  repressed.  She  attributed  it  at  first 
to  a  momentary  relaxation  of  her  moral  self-discipline. 
But  even  when  she  first  remarks  on  it  (May  18th,  1913) 
she  also  suggests  that  there  may  be  a  real  affinity  be¬ 
tween  human  and  divine  love,  and  she  notices  the  fact 
that  they  have,  to  a  large  extent,  the  same  language. 
She  also  remarks  (July  14th,  1914)  that  two  of  her 
friends  who  were  temperamentally  unable  to  feel  sex 
love  seemed  also  incapable  of  experiencing  V emotion  du 
divin.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  the  belief  in  the 
affinity  between  human  and  religious  love  to  which  she 
was  led  was  not  that  of  Mr  Schroeder.  She  remained 
convinced  of  the  difference  in  value  between  the  dif¬ 
ferent  directions  of  the  libido. 

There  seems  to  be  no  satisfactory  evidence  connect¬ 
ing  the  times  of  her  experiences  with  the  rhythm  of  her 
sex-life.  Flournoy  points  out  that  the  intervals  between 
the  first  sixteen  of  her  ecstasies  were  as  follows:  5,  3,  11, 
7,  8,  5,  8,  6,  7,  11,  5,  8,  9,  8,  7  days.  The  mean  of  these  is 
7.  Flournoy  concludes  that  the  ecstasies  had  a  period 
which  was  just  a  quarter  of  her  menstrual  period,  but 
that  this  periodicity  was  masked  by  the  great  variations 
due  to  the  mental  condition  of  the  moment.  It  seems 
perilous,  however,  to  try  to  draw  any  conclusions  from 
the  mean  of  numbers  which  vary  so  widely  amongst 
themselves.  One  is  also  tempted  to  wonder  whether  the 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


257 


two  years  of  ecstasy  occurred  during  the  period  of  cli¬ 
macteric  excitement,  and  whether  the  cessation  of 
ecstasy  was  not  coincident  with  the  end  of  that  period. 
Flournoy  does  not  mention  this  point,  but  it  seems  clear 
from  the  narrative  that  the  climacteric  had  not  occurred 
at  the  time  that  Flournoy’s  account  of  her  ends  (March, 
1915). 

We  may  sum  up  the  characters  of  the  mystical  ex¬ 
perience  of  Mile  Ye  by  mentioning  the  headings  under 
which  Flournoy  discusses  it.  He  notices  its  ontological 
certainty,  its  ineffability,  its  imperative  character,  its 
incommunicability,  its  non-personality,  the  resultant 
depreciation  of  traditional  religion  and  lastly  its  sexual 
coefficient.  In  all  of  these  respects  it  does  not  differ 
from  the  traditional  Christian  mystical  experience.  It 
will  hardly  be  denied  that  both  the  fifth  and  sixth  ele¬ 
ments  are  present  as  tendencies  even  in  Catholic  mys¬ 
ticism,  but  these  tendencies  are  resisted  as  dangers  of 
an  exclusive  reliance  on  subjective  experience  in  re¬ 
ligion.  The  religion  of  the  Catholic  mystic  is  never  the 
religion  supplied  by  his  mystical  experience  alone.  He 
has  a  greater  respect  for  traditional  ways  of  thought  and 
expression  than  had  Mile  Ye,  a  respect  which  saves  him 
from  the  danger  of  spiritual  isolation  which  Mile  Ve 
did  not  altogether  manage  to  avoid. 

A  marked  difference  from  traditional  mysticism  is  to 
be  found  in  the  absence  of  any  preliminary  ascetic  prac¬ 
tices,  but  it  is  easy  to  exaggerate  the  completeness  of 
this  absence.  Although  undertaken  simply  for  moral 
discipline  and  not  for  the  sake  of  attaining  to  spiritual 
experiences,  the  practices  of  her  life  wTere  often  severe. 
Even  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  she  forced  herself  for 
three  months  to  get  up  between  four  and  five  in  the 


258 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


mornings  in  order  to  overcome  her  habitual  reluctance 
to  rise.  She  remained  an  early  riser,  and  her  habits  of 
life  were  frugal.  Most  important  of  all,  she  strongly 
repressed  the  sexual  side  of  her  nature.  This  repression 
wTas  symbolised  in  those  of  her  dreams  which  dealt  with 
these  matters  by  the  slaying  of  a  white  horse.  It  culmi¬ 
nated  in  the  definite  sacrifice  of  her  love-life  when  she 
renounced  her  intimacy  with  M.  Y.  It  was  suggested 
in  an  earlier  chapter,  when  discussing  the  mystical  con¬ 
version,  that  this  was  the  essential  step  in  freeing  the 
libido  from  its  earthly  attachments,  compared  with 
which  the  other  ascetic  practices  were  relatively  un¬ 
important. 

In  discussing  the  psychological  determinants  of  Mile 
Ye’s  mysticism,  it  is  also  necessary  to  remember  that  a 
habit  of  introversion  was  probably  implanted  in  child¬ 
hood  by  the  feeling  of  inferiority  which  has  already  been 
mentioned.  This  is  the  kind  of  factor  in  mental  de¬ 
velopment  upon  which  stress  is  laid  by  the  psycho¬ 
analytic  school  of  Dr  Adler,  which  also  is  recognised  as 
an  important  determinant  of  introversion  by  Dr  Jung. 
The  tendency  to  seek  for  happiness  in  another  system 
of  reality,  may  already  have  been  implanted  in  her  by 
her  childhood’s  failure  to  find  it  in  this  world. 

The  last  point  of  importance  to  which  I  wish  to  draw 
attention  is  the  value  of  Mile  Ve’s  mysticism  for  her 
mental  health  and  for  her  life.  It  is  essentially  mis¬ 
leading  to  talk  of  mysticism  (as  so  many  psychologists 
do)  as  if  it  were  a  succession  of  emotional  experiences 
wdiich  were  valued  merely  as  emotional  experiences. 
Flournoy  quotes  Silberer’s  statement  that  true  mys¬ 
ticism  is  characterised  by  an  enlargement  of  personality, 
and  he  finds  striking  evidence  of  such  enlargement  in 
Mile  Ve.  The  manner  of  dealing  with  her  libido  by  its 


A  MODERN  MYSTIC 


259 


sublimation  into  religious  channels  is  one  which  re¬ 
sulted  in  an  enrichment,  and  not  in  an  impoverishment 
of  her  character.  Even  if  we  rejected  its  claim  to  ob¬ 
jective  reality,  we  could  not  judge  the  value  of  her  mys¬ 
ticism  without  taking  into  account  the  fact  that  it  prob¬ 
ably  played  an  essential  part  in  bringing  stability  and 
happiness  into  a  life  which  seemed  to  have  been  blasted 
in  its  beginnings  by  the  wickedness  of  another  person. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 

W e  have  so  far  been  describing  the  phenomena  of  the 
religious  consciousness,  and  discussing  its  psychological 
mechanism  without  concerning  ourselves  with  the  ques¬ 
tion  of  how  far  what  has  been  said  has  any  bearing  on 
our  intellectual  attitude  towards  religion.  It  is  clear 
that  at  many  points  we  have  been  skirting  questions 
of  great  practical  importance,  which  probably  raised 
themselves  in  the  minds  of  my  readers  at  such  points. 
It  is  to  such  questions  (belonging  rather  to  the  philoso¬ 
phy  than  to  the  psychology  of  religion)  that  I  intend  to 
devote  this  last  chapter. 

We  must  begin  by  making  clear  exactly  how  much  we 
intend  to  discuss,  and  what  kind  of  answers  we  may 
expect  to  our  questions.  The  central  problem  is,  What 
contribution  does  such  a  psychological  treatment  of  re¬ 
ligion  make  to  our  knowledge  of  its  truth  or  falsity? 
We  may  ask  whether  we  have  shown  that  all  the  phe¬ 
nomena  of  religion  are  explicable  in  terms  of  known 
mental  activities,  and  therefore  proved  its  untruth.  Or 
have  we  shown  the  inability  of  psychology  to  give  a 
satisfactory  account  of  some  of  the  facts  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  and  therefore  left  room  for  the  action  of 
God?  It  is  in  some  such  form  as  the  foregoing  questions 
that  the  problem  is  often  posed,  but  the  form  of  the  two 
questions  is  open  to  objection  since  it  involves  assump¬ 
tions  which  must  themselves  be  examined.  We  may 

260 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


261 


take  both  of  these  questions  one  stage  further  back  and 
ask  whether  success  in  the  expression  of  the  phenomena 
of  religion  in  terms  of  known  mental  processes  would 
indeed  prove  its  falsity,  and  whether  it  is  really  in  the 
gaps  in  our  scientific  knowledge  that  we  must  look  for 
the  finger  of  God.  The  answer  to  these  last  twTo  ques¬ 
tions  is  very  generally  assumed  in  the  hasty  solutions  of 
the  problems  of  religious  psychology  which  are  often 
given. 

Professor  Leuba,  for  example,  assumes  a  positive 
answer  to  the  first  of  them  when  he  says: 

If  there  were  extra-human  sources  of  knowledge  and 
superhuman  sources  of  human  power,  their  existence 
should,  it  seems,  have  become  increasingly  evident.  Yet 
the  converse  is  apparently  true ;  the  supernatural  wrnrld 
of  the  savage  has  become  a  natural  world  to  civilized 
man;  the  miraculous  of  yesterday  is  the  explicable  of 
to-day.  In  religious  lives  accessible  to  psychological  in¬ 
vestigation,  nothing  requiring  the  admission  of  super¬ 
human  influences  has  been  found.  There  is  nothing,  for 
example,  in  the  life  of  the  great  Spanish  mystic  whose 
celebrity  is  being  renewed  by  contemporary  psychol¬ 
ogists, — not  a  desire,  not  a  feeling,  not  a  thought,  not 
a  vision,  not  an  illumination, — that  can  seriously  make 
us  look  to  transcendent  causes.1 

He  goes  on,  not  to  prove,  but  to  assume  that  he  has 
thus  disposed  of  what  he  calls  transcendent  causes . 
There  are,  of  course,  other  criticisms  of  this  passage 
from  Leuba.  For  example,  it  is  impossible  to  pretend 
that  our  knowledge  of  psychological  laws  is  so  complete 
that  we  can  honestly  say  that  it  provides  us  with  an  ex¬ 
planation  of  the  desires,  thoughts,  feelings,  etc.,  of  any¬ 
body.  The  point,  however,  which  I  wish  to  emphasise  at 
present  is  that  it  makes  the  unproved  assumption  that 
1 A  Psychological  Study  oj  Religion,  p.  272. 


262 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


religion  would  be  convicted  of  falsity  if  it  could  be  ex¬ 
pressed  in  terms  of  known  psychological  laws. 

The  positive  answer  to  the  second  of  these  two  ques¬ 
tions  (which  is,  of  course,  implied  by  a  positive  answer 
to  the  first)  seems  to  be  assumed  by  Professor  J.  Bissett 
Pratt  when  he  is  arguing  against  Leuba’s  view  and  says : 

if  the  psychologist  can  explain  all  the  facts  of  the 
religious  consciousness  by  scientific  laws  then  there  is 
no  psychological  proof  of  God’s  presence  and  influence 
in  our  lives.1 

He  does  not  take  Leuba’s  further  step  of  supposing 
that  our  failure  to  find  evidence  of  breaks  in  the  causal 
sequence  of  mental  events  in  the  religious  life  is  evi¬ 
dence  that  religion  is  false,  but  only  that  no  evidence 
can  be  brought  for  its  truth  from  the  psychological 
study  of  religion.  The  possibility  that  the  religious  ex¬ 
planation  of  religious  experience  may  be  the  true  one, 
although  psychological  investigation  is  powerless  to 
prove  it,  he  illustrates  in  the  following  manner.  He  sup¬ 
poses  that  the  human  race  is  living  in  perpetual  sun¬ 
light,  but  that  most  men  are  blind  and  a  few  only  are 
able  to  see.  One  of  those  men  who  can  see  will,  on  open¬ 
ing  his  eyes,  be  receiving  light  sensations.  One  of  the 
blind  psychologists  could  apply  the  method  of  single 
difference  to  demonstrate  that  the  opening  of  the  eyes 
was  the  cause  of  the  light  sensations  and  fully  explained 
them  (in  the  psychological  sense),  no  reference  being 
needed  to  the  sun  or  the  ether  waves  or  any  other  outer 
source.  If  the  seer  insisted  that  he  saw  the  sun,  the 
psychologist  could  challenge  him  to  see  light  with  his 
eyes  shut,  or  to  fail  to  see  it  with  them  open,  or  to  point 
out  a  single  element  in  his  experience  not  accounted  for 

1  The  Religious  Consciousness,  p.  455. 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


263 


by  the  psychological  formula.  Both,  Pratt  considers, 
would  be  right.  Within  its  own  limits  the  psychological 
explanation  would  be  complete,  and  it  would  be  vain  to 
seek  to  prove  the  objective  existence  of  the  sun  by 
breaking  down  the  psychological  correlation  of  light 
sensation  and  organic  condition.  And  yet  it  would  be 
true  that  the  seer  saw  the  sun. 

We  will  now  return  to  the  discussion  of  the  idea  that 
it  is  sufficient  in  order  to  refute  religion  to  state  that  all 
its  phenomena  can  be  accounted  for  by  the  operation 
of  the  ordinary  laws  of  psychology.  Of  course,  with  the 
present  limitation  of  our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of 
mental  operations,  it  is  not  true  that  they  can ;  but  per¬ 
haps  this  will  be  possible  one  day.  The  position  that,  in 
this  case,  religion  would  be  proved  to  be  illusory,  is  not 
ordinarily  stated.  The  opponent  of  religion  is  content 
to  demonstrate,  so  far  as  he  can,  that  religion  is  expli¬ 
cable  in  terms  of  ordinary  psychological  processes,  and 
to  give  a  metaphorical  shrug  of  his  shoulders  which  in¬ 
duces  his  readers  to  take  the  further  step  for  themselves. 

The  foregoing  discussion  should  have  made  it  clear 
that  this  position  is  reached  by  two  steps.  The  first  is 
the  statement  that  the  only  possible  psychological 
proof  of  the  reality  of  divine  action  in  religious  experi¬ 
ence  is  the  discovery  of  gaps  in  its  psychological  causa¬ 
tion,  that  no  such  gaps  can  be  found,  and  that,  there¬ 
fore,  the  truth  of  religion  cannot  be  proved  by  psy¬ 
chology.  The  second  step  is  that  if  it  cannot  be  proved 
by  psychology  then  it  is  not  true;  a  fallacy  well  rebutted 
by  Pratt  in  his  parable  of  the  blind  psychologist  and  the 
seer  of  the  sun.  But  surely  it  is  enough  to  state  it  ex¬ 
plicitly  to  make  it  clear  that  this  second  step  is  a  fallacy 
which  can  only  escape  detection  when  it  conceals  itself 
as  an  implicit  assumption. 


264 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


But  even  the  first  step,  which  Professor  Pratt  ad¬ 
mits,  cannot  be  allowed  to  pass  unquestioned.  Is  it 
absolutely  certain  that  the  only  evidence  we  could  pos¬ 
sibly  have  of  the  divine  origin  of  religious  states  of  mind 
is  that  they  are  not  found  to  obey  the  same  psycho¬ 
logical  laws  as  other  mental  facts?  It  does  not  seem  to 
be  self-evident  that  this  is  the  case.  I  intend  later  to 
mention  ways  in  which  religious  people  have  attempted 
to  justify  their  faith  by  arguments  drawn  from  religious 
experience  which  do  not  involve  any  assertion  of  a  con¬ 
tradiction  of  known  psychological  laws.  We  may,  of 
course,  on  examining  them  decide  that  all  of  these  argu¬ 
ments  are  invalid.  If  we  do,  and  if  no  others  can  be 
found,  it  will  be  necessary  for  religious  persons  to  fall 
back  on  arguments  drawn  from  mental  facts  which  fall 
outside  known  psychological  laws  (if  such  can  be  found) 
if  they  intend  to  use  psychology  as  a  support  for  their 
faith.  But  we  must  protest  against  the  introduction  at 
this  stage  of  an  assumption  (and  a  totally  unnecessary 
assumption)  which  would  condemn  all  such  arguments 
unheard. 

A  similar  criticism  must  be  directed  against  another 
too  easy  method  of  refuting  religion  adopted  by  Feuer¬ 
bach  and  by  some  of  the  psychoanalytical  writers.  This 
is  a  reduction  of  the  doctrines  of  religion  to  fulfilments 
of  human  wishes  with  the  implicit  conclusion  that  they 
are  therefore  illusory.  We  ought,  indeed,  to  be  careful 
in  the  use  of  the  argument  so  common  in  popular  the¬ 
ology  which  uses  the  fact  that  particular  doctrines  of 
Christianity  fulfil  mental  needs  as  evidence  for  their 
truth.  Unless  we  assume  the  existence  of  a  benevolent 
God,  there  seems  no  sufficient  reason  for  saying  that  the 
actual  nature  of  the  universe  must  correspond  with  our 
desires,  but  certainly  it  may.  If  we  had  other  grounds 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


265 


for  believing  in  the  existence  of  a  benevolent  God,  there 
might  even  be  a  presumption  in  favour  of  the  nature  of 
reality  being  such  as  our  demands  required  it  to  be.  The 
reduction  of  religious  dogma  to  wish-fulfilment — the 
belief  in  God  to  the  demand  for  a  perfect  lover  or  for  the 
parent,  the  belief  in  immortality  to  the  demand  for  con¬ 
tinued  personal  existence  and  for  the  survival  of  those 
we  love,  and  so  on — cannot  in  itself  be  a  valid  logical 
argument  against  religion,  for  it  would  only  be  effective 
as  evidence  against  religious  truth  if  the  hypothesis  of 
the  reality  of  God  were  ruled  out  on  other  grounds. 

There  is  a  last  tendency  which  must  also  be  noticed 
to  abandon,  on  logically  insufficient  grounds,  the  claim 
to  truth  of  religion.  It  was  stated  in  earlier  chapters 
that  heterosuggestion  and  autosuggestion  played  a  part 
in  the  formation  of  religious  belief.  It  is  easy  to  make 
the  inference  that  religion  is  merely  the  result  of  sug¬ 
gestion,  and  to  dismiss  it  as  a  delusion  partly  fostered 
by  other  people  and  partly  by  ourselves.  This  inference 
becomes  easier  if  we  always  think  of  autosuggestion  as 
a  method  of  self-deception,  and  of  autohypnosis  as  a 
condition  involving  the  lulling  to  sleep  of  the  “higher 
faculties,”  so  that  self-deception  may  be  successfully 
carried  out.  But  we  saw  that  this  was  a  ridiculously 
misleading  way  of  looking  at  these  things.  Autosugges¬ 
tion  is  a  process  of  the  education  of  the  subconscious, 
and  autohypnosis  and  its  related  mental  states  (Bau- 
douin’s  contention,  concentration,  etc.)  are  conditions 
under  which  this  education  is  most  effectively  carried 
out.  Autosuggestion  may  be  employed  to  implant  true 
ideas  in  the  mind  as  well  as  false.  The  above  considera¬ 
tions  apply,  of  course,  equally  to  the  implanting  of 
beliefs  by  heterosuggestion.  The  fact  that  religious 
beliefs  are  fostered  by  the  methods  of  suggestion  is  no 


266 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


evidence  either  of  their  falsity  or  of  their  truth.  The 
only  real  relevance  of  this  fact  to  the  problem  of  the 
truth  of  religious  belief  is  that  it  makes  impossible  any 
proof  of  the  truth  of  a  religious  doctrine  from  its  mere 
existence  as  a  belief.  It  still  remains  possible  to  argue 
that  the  belief  has  characters  which  give  evidence  that 
it  is  true. 

The  question  as  to  whether  religious  experience  can 
give  any  evidence  for  the  truth  of  religion  is  an  impor¬ 
tant  one  at  the  present  time.  Many  schools  of  religious 
thought  are  now  trying  to  base  the  whole  of  their  the¬ 
ology  on  subjective  experience.  Others,  more  cautiously, 
recognise  this  as  one  amongst  many  sources  of  religious 
knowledge.  As  an  example  of  the  latter  attitude,  I  will 
quote  a  passage  from  Professor  Sorley’s  Gifford  lectures: 

When  reflexion  intervenes  upon  this  [religious]  ex¬ 
perience,  the  dangerous  process  of  describing  and 
naming  begins.  The  power  to  which  the  individual 
trusts  for  reconciliation  and  security — in  a  word,  for 
salvation — is  conceived  as  beyond  the  reach  of  hostile 
or  indifferent  forces,  as  willing  the  good  which  the  wor¬ 
shipper  conceives,  and  as  able  to  carry  out  what  he 
wills.  Starting  in  this  way  from  the  facts  of  religious 
experience,  the  religious  man  becomes  involved  in  the 
same  problems,  concerning  the  relation  of  nature  and 
values  to  one  another  and  of  both  to  the  ultimate 
ground  of  reality,  which  meet  the  philosopher  in  his 
attempt  to  arrive  at  an  interpretation  of  the  universe.1 

This  tendency  has  passed  from  the  work  of  original 
thinkers  into  popular  writings  on  theology,  and  in  these 
it  sometimes  takes  forms  which  are  open  to  serious 
criticism.  The  objective  validity  of  religious  experience 
easily  becomes  a  formula  wdiich  serves  no  other  purpose 

1  Moral  Values  and  the  Idea  of  God,  p.  478. 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


267 


than  to  hide  looseness  of  thought.  All  religious  experi¬ 
ence  cannot  be  valid  (unless,  of  course,  we  choose  to 
mean  by  religious  experience  only  such  subjective  ex¬ 
perience  as  is  objectively  valid,  when  the  formula  loses 
all  possibility  of  proving  of  practical  value).  If  the 
formula  is  to  mean  anything  at  all  for  us,  we  must, 
before  employing  it,  seriously  face  two  questions.  The 
first  is  whether  we  can  know  that  any  religious  experi¬ 
ence  is  objectively  valid,  i.e.  points  to  a  reality  beyond 
itself.  If  we  decide  that  it  can,  we  find  ourselves  faced 
with  the  problem  of  finding  a  criterion  by  which  we  can 
decide  what  part  of  the  subjective  experience  connected 
with  religion  has  this  objective  validity  and  what  part 
has  not. 

I  will  begin  by  discussing  a  particularly  simple  answer 
to  the  second  of  these  questions,  since  it  is  clear  that  if 
we  could  begin  by  discovering  a  criterion  by  which  the 
objective  validity  of  some  religious  experience  was 
clearly  established,  we  would  also  have  answered  our 
first  question  without  having  given  ourselves  much 
trouble.  If  we  fail  to  find  such  a  clearly  marked  cri¬ 
terion,  it  may  still  be  possible  that  we  can  justify  the 
formula  the  objective  validity  of  religious  experience, 
but  it  will  be  necessary  to  do  so  by  first  finding  out 
whether  any  religious  experience  can  be  reasonably  held 
to  point  to  a  reality  behind  it,  and  then  working  out  a 
rough  practical  guide  which  may  tell  us  no  more  than 
that  on  the  whole  it  is  probable  that  certain  experiences 
have  this  reference  to  a  reality  behind  them,  while 
others  probably  have  not. 

Such  intense  experiences  as  mystical  states  of  prayer, 
and,  to  a  less  extent,  other  religious  experiences,  seem 
often  to  come  with  a  character  of  givenness  which 
makes  it  impossible  for  the  experient  to  doubt  that  they 


268 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


come  from  outside  himself.  The  mystic  experiences 
voices  and  visions  which  he  feels  certain  cannot  come 
from  his  own  mind,  because  they  come  as  suddenly  into 
his  consciousness  and  as  independently  of  the  stream  of 
his  thought  as  do  perceptions.  In  an  earlier  chapter  I 
quoted  from  a  thesis  by  a  French  Protestant,  who  says: 
“we  feel  within  us  a  being  that  is  not  ourselves ;  we  see 
born  within  us  new  ideas  and  perceptions,  real  revela¬ 
tions  that  do  not  come  from  ourselves.”  1  Now,  it  is  just 
this  character  of  coming  from  outside  our  own  minds, 
which  we  may  call  givenness,  that  is,  the  subjective 
mark  of  what  we  consider  to  belong  to  the  outside 
world;  it  is  the  mark  of  objects  of  perception  as  distinct 
from  those  of  imagination.  It  follows  that  the  affirma¬ 
tion  that  all  experiences  accompanied  by  this  mark  are 
experiences  of  objective  reality  is  a  natural  one.  If  psy¬ 
chology  could  give  no  other  explanation  of  this  char¬ 
acter  than  that  such  experience  is  of  the  nature  of  per¬ 
ception,  then  the  argument  as  to  the  reality  of  the 
objects  of  religion  wTould,  at  least,  be  settled  for  those 
who  have  had  such  experiences.  Other  people,  too, 
might  reasonably  be  asked  to  accept  the  testimony  of 
the  large  number  of  persons  to  whom  the  experience  was 
real.  Unfortunately,  however,  psychological  science  has 
another  explanation  of  this  character  which  prevents  us 
from  taking  such  an  easy  path  out  of  our  difficulties. 

This  character  of  givenness  belongs  not  only  to  per¬ 
ceptions  of  external  reality,  but  also  to  any  experiences 
which  result  from  the  passage  of  mental  processes  from 
unconscious  regions  of  the  mind  to  consciousness. 
Dreams,  and  the  vague  images  and  intuitions  which 
cross  our  minds  in  the  waking  state,  equally  with  relig¬ 
ious  feelings,  seem  to  be  outside  the  stream  of  thought, 

1 A  Psychological  Study  of  Religion.  Leuba,  p.  222. 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


269 


and  like  religious  feelings  have  been  rationalised  by  at¬ 
tributing  their  origin  to  something  outside  the  person 
experiencing  them.  In  certain  forms  of  mental  disorder 
these  images  and  thoughts  possess  the  same  convinc¬ 
ingly  apparent  objective  reality  as  the  visions  and  locu¬ 
tions  of  the  mystic.  The  conflicts  which  emerge  from 
the  subconscious  of  these  insane  persons  are  heard  by 
them  as  voices  which  are  as  objectively  real  to  them  as 
the  voices  of  actual  people  belonging  to  the  real  world. 
We  can  find,  however,  a  full  and  sufficient  explanation 
of  such  experiences  in  the  theory  that  they  are  irrup¬ 
tions  into  consciousness  of  material  from  unconscious 
levels  of  the  mind.  The  apparently  outside  origin  of  re¬ 
ligious  experiences  may  reasonably  be  explained  in  the 
same  way.  It  is  possible,  therefore,  to  say  with  Dela¬ 
croix,  that  where  the  mystic  postulates  God,  the  psy¬ 
chologist  need  only  postulate  the  subconscious.  In 
arguing  against  the  psychologist  in  this  matter,  it  is 
grossly  unfair  to  talk  (as  do  Fr.  Poulain  and  many  other 
Roman  Catholic  writers)  of  the  subconscious  as  if  it 
were  a  hypothesis  invented  by  the  psychologists  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  providing  an  alternative  explanation  of 
religious  phenomena.  The  subconscious  is  becoming 
increasingly  well  known  in  general  psychology,  and  in 
general  psychology  its  action  is  found  in  phenomena 
closely  parallel  to  those  of  the  religious  life. 

We  must  be  careful,  however,  to  notice  exactly  how 
far  these  considerations  have  carried  us.  They  have 
given  us  no  reason  for  supposing  that  no  valid  argument 
can  be  drawn  for  the  validity  of  religious  experience 
from  psychological  data.  They  have  only  shown  the 
weakness  of  this  one  simple  and  rather  crude  argument 
from  the  givenness  of  such  experience — the  argument 
that  because  I  feel  that  these  experiences  have  not  come 


270  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


from  my  own  mind,  they  are  due  to  divine  action.  Un¬ 
doubtedly  this  argument  has  sometimes  been  used  ex¬ 
plicitly  to  prove  the  validity  of  religious  experience,  and 
probably  it  has  much  more  force  to  the  minds  of  unre¬ 
flecting  people  who  do  not  argue  about  their  experience 
at  all.  But  it  is  very  easy  to  exaggerate  the  extent  to 
which  it  has  been  used.  As  soon  as  religious  persons 
begin  to  reflect  on  their  subjective  experiences  they  find 
that  a  large  number  of  them  cannot  be  due  to  divine 
action  because  they  seem  to  be  evil  in  their  fruits,  and 
these  seem  to  have  just  the  same  character  of  percep¬ 
tions  as  the  others.  Angels  are  seen,  but  the  fruit  of  the 
visions  is  pride,  and  voices  purporting  to  be  divine  ex¬ 
hort  the  saint  to  rebellion  or  to  peculiarity  of  doctrine 
or  practice.  He,  of  course,  still  believes  that  they  come 
from  some  source  outside  himself,  and  attributes  them 
to  the  devil.  The  important  thing  to  notice  is  that  he 
finds  himself  unable  to  make  the  simple  criterion  of 
givenness  a  sufficient  criterion  of  the  divine  source  of 
his  revelations. 

Let  us  turn  to  St  Teresa  as  a  typical  reflective  mystic 
to  see  what  she  did,  in  fact,  take  as  a  criterion  of  the 
divine  source  of  her  experiences.  It  is  much  more  com¬ 
plex  than  the  one  we  have  just  been  discussing.  When 
giving  her  reasons  for  believing  that  a  form  of  ecstasy, 
which  she  calls  the  flight  oj  the  spirit,  is  neither  an 
illusion  nor  the  work  of  the  devil,  she  says: 

neither  the  imagination  nor  the  evil  one  could  represent 
what  leaves  such  peace,  calm,  and  good  fruits  in  the 
soul,  and  particularly  the  following  three  graces  of  a 
very  high  order.  The  first  of  these  is  a  perception  of  the 
greatness  of  God,  which  becomes  clearer  to  us  as  we 
witness  more  of  it.  Secondly,  we  gain  self-knowledge 
and  humility  as  we  see  how  creatures  so  base  as  our- 


271 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 

selves  in  comparison  with  the  Creator  of  such  wonders, 
have  dared  to  offend  Him  in  the  past  or  venture  to  gaze 
on  Him  now.  The  third  grace  is  a  contempt  of  all 
earthly  things  unless  they  are  consecrated  to  the  ser¬ 
vice  of  so  great  a  God.1 

I  do  not  propose,  at  present,  to  discuss  the  validity 
of  St  Teresa’s  criteria,  but  only  to  point  out  how  far 
removed  they  are  from  the  simple  argument  from  the 
apparent  extramental  origin  of  religious  experiences 
which  we  started  by  discussing.  It  should  be  clear  that 
the  large  number  of  attacks  on  the  validity  of  religious 
experience,  which  assume  that  this  argument  in  its 
crudest  form  is  the  only  position  which  need  be  dealt 
with,  are  gaining  a  victory  very  much  too  cheaply. 

What  has  been  said  so  far  has  been  a  necessary  clear¬ 
ing  of  the  ground  before  starting  an  attack  on  the  main 
problem — whether  psychological  analysis  provides  us 
with  any  means  of  deciding  whether  there  is  an  objec¬ 
tive  reality  behind  some  part  at  least  of  what  we  call  re¬ 
ligious  experience.  This  is  clearly  a  problem  belonging 
to  the  philosophy  of  religion.  It  is  a  part,  and  only  a 
part,  of  the  problem  of  our  knowledge  of  the  truth  of 
religious  conceptions.  It  will  be  well  to  define  the  prob¬ 
lem  more  clearly  so  that  we  may  see  what  part  of  the 
philosophy  of  religion  it  clearly  is  not.  There  are  two 
main  ways  of  approach  to  religious  knowledge  which  we 
are  leaving  entirely  on  one  side.  These  are  the  meta¬ 
physical  way  and  the  approach  by  revelation.  It  may 
be  possible  to  prove  the  truth  of  religion  by  pure  reason 
without  any  appeal  to  experience.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
is  possible  that  religious  truth  has  been  revealed  and 
that  any  attempt  to  prove  it  either  by  pure  reason  or 
from  experience  is  necessarily  futile.  It  may  be,  of 

1  The  Interior  Castle,  6.  v.  12. 


272  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


course,  that  all  three  methods  of  approach  are  valid  and 
that  all  three  together  may  be  found  to  support  the 
truth  of  religious  conceptions.  The  method  of  approach 
by  experience — the  empirical  method — is  only  one  of 
three  possible  methods  of  attempting  the  justification 
of  religious  belief,  and  the  data  of  a  psychological  study 
of  religion  are  only  a  part  of  the  data  of  the  empirical 
method. 

I  am  emphasising  this  point  because  I  do  not  wish  it 
to  be  supposed  that  if  we  do  not  find  any  final  and  irre¬ 
fragable  proof  of  the  truth  of  religion  from  religious 
experience,  we  have  undermined  the  foundations  of  re¬ 
ligious  belief.  Even  if  we  found  no  satisfactory  support 
for  religion  at  all  in  the  empirical  method,  we  should 
still  only  have  reached  the  position  held  by  many  re¬ 
ligious  intellectualists  and  by  the  sturdiest  supporters 
of  revelation  as  the  supreme  source  of  religious  knowl¬ 
edge,  for  neither  of  these  have  ever  supposed  that  any 
valid  defence  of  religion  was  to  be  found  by  the  empir¬ 
ical  method.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  find  that  we  have 
not  a  certain  proof  but  a  strong  presumption  of  the 
truth  of  religion  from  evidence  drawn  from  our  study, 
this  result  may  be,  in  reality,  a  very  valuable  one,  al¬ 
though  it  would  be  disappointing  if  we  supposed  that 
we  were  discussing  the  sole  source  of  evidence  for  relig¬ 
ious  truth.  We  have  no  reason  for  supposing  that  we 
shall  be  able  to  found  a  satisfactory  apologetic  on  relig¬ 
ious  experience  alone.  Any  indications  with  which  it 
may  provide  us  must  be  taken  in  conjunction  with  all 
our  other  sources  of  knowledge. 

Metaphysicians  point  out  that  no  empirical  argument 
can  give  absolute  certainty.  All  knowledge  drawn  from 
experience  is  essentially  knowledge  obtained  by  the  in- 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


273 


ductive  method,  and  this  can  only  give  a  high  degree 
of  probability.  We  do  not  know  that  the  sun  will  rise 
to-morrow  with  the  same  apodictic  certainty  as  we  know 
that  two  plus  two  makes  four.  So  long  as  we  are  using 
the  empirical  method  in  our  approach  to  religious  truth, 
it  is  necessary,  frankly  to  recognise  that  we  are  working 
under  the  same  limitation.  By  the  empirical  method  we 
can  reach  no  demonstration  of  the  truths  of  religion 
which  must  command  assent  in  the  same  way  as  the 
truths  of  mathematics.  We  might  conceivably  reach  as 
high  a  degree  of  probability  as  we  have  when  we  assert 
that  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow^  but  that  is  not  what  is 
meant  by  apodictic  certainty.  In  actual  fact,  of  course, 
we  shall  probably  find  that  we  must  be  content  with  a 
much  lower  degree  of  probability  than  that. 

Our  attack  on  the  problem  will  be  made  much  easier 
if  we  bear  in  mind  this  limitation.  We  are  not  looking 
for  an  absolutely  certain  proof  of  the  truths  of  religion. 
Such  certainty  may  be  supplied  by  revelation  or  by 
metaphysics,  but  with  these  we  are  not  concerned. 
What  we  are  looking  for  are  considerations  which  appear 
to  indicate,  with  however  small  a  degree  of  probability, 
a  solution  to  our  problem.  We  shall  not  be  content  with 
working  out  one  or  only  a  few  arguments  for  or  against 
the  reality  of  the  objects  of  religion.  If  we  could  find 
one  single  convincing  and  final  argument  for  the  exist¬ 
ence  of  God  which  must  command  the  assent  of  the 
most  obstinate  atheist  unless  he  refused  to  follow  his 
reason,  then  we  might  be  satisfied  with  that  and  go  no 
further.  But  if  we  know  that  the  limitations  of  our 
method  are  such  that  we  have  no  hope  of  finding  such 
a  proof,  and  that  we  are  necessarily  limited  to  judging 
probabilities  and  establishing  presumptions,  then  we 


274  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


must  take  into  account  every  item  of  experience  that 
is  available.  The  contribution  of  each  particular  part 
of  experience  may  not  be  large,  but  the  combined  effect 
of  a  considerable  number  may  be  to  produce  an  accumu¬ 
lation  of  evidence  sufficient  to  compel  belief  in  an 
unprejudiced  mind. 

In  presenting  a  few  of  the  lines  of  argument  which 
have  been  followed  by  persons  trying  in  this  way  to 
marshal  evidence  to  create  a  presumption  in  favour  of 
the  truth  of  the  religious  explanation  of  the  facts  of 
religious  psychology,  I  shall  try  to  avoid  the  position  of 
an  advocate  for  this  explanation.  I  do  believe,  in  fact, 
that  it  is  the  true  one.  But  nothing  could  more  fatally 
weaken  the  case  for  this  explanation  than  an  attitude 
which  refused  to  see  the  weak  points  in  the  arguments 
in  its  favour.  Our  judgment  of  probabilities  will  be 
valueless  unless  it  is  a  genuine  judgment,  that  is,  one 
which  does  not  proceed  from  the  conviction  that  we 
must  at  all  costs  decide  on  one  side.  We  may  reasonably 
refuse  to  investigate  these  questions  at  all,  being  con¬ 
tent  with  a  simple  faith  or  lack  of  faith  which  takes  or 
refuses  all  on  trust,  but  if  we  do  investigate  them  we 
must  do  so  as  impartially  as  we  can. 

If  we  were  convinced  that  the  empirical  method  was 
the  only  one  available  for  the  discovery  of  truth,  so  that 
we  would  be  left  in  the  end  with  a  choice  between  two 
sets  of  probabilities,  we  should  be  faced  by  the  problem 
discussed  by  William  James  in  his  Will  to  Believe.  We 
have  what  he  calls  a  living,  forced  and  momentous 
option.  Living  because  both  the  alternatives  of  relig¬ 
ious  faith  and  agnosticism  are  possible  to  us,  forced  be¬ 
cause  no  attitude  of  leaving  the  question  open  is 
possible,  momentous  because  it  may  be  of  unlimited 
importance  which  choice  we  make.  At  the  same  time  it 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


275 


is  (on  the  above  assumption)  an  option  which  cannot  be 
decided  on  intellectual  grounds.  In  this  case,  James 
pleads  for  the  right  of  voluntary  adoption  of  faith.  He 
says: 

Our  passional  natures  not  only  lawfully  may,  but 
must,  decide  an  option  between  propositions,  whenever 
it  is  a  genuine  option  that  cannot  by  its  nature  be 
decided  on  intellectual  grounds;  for  to  say,  under  such 
circumstances,  “Do  not  decide,  but  leave  the  question 
open,”  is  itself  a  passional  decision — just  like  deciding 
yes  or  no — and  is  attended  with  the  same  risk  of  missing 
the  truth. 

It  is  a  caricature  of  this  position  to  represent  it,  as 
many  writers  do,  as  equivalent  to  saying  that  we  may 
believe  anything,  whether  it  be  true  or  false,  if  only  the 
belief  is  of  sufficient  practical  value  to  make  it  wTorth 
preserving.  James  is  assuming  that  the  belief  in  ques¬ 
tion  is  a  live  one,  which  it  would  be  only  if  we  thought 
it  likely  to  be  true. 

This  position  is  the  last  trench  into  which  the  relig¬ 
ious  man  can  be  driven  by  his  empirical  opponent,  and 
unless  it  be  possible  to  find  a  final  and  unquestionable 
metaphysical  argument  for  the  non-existence  of  God 
(surely  a  hopeless  quest)  it  is  impossible  to  drive  him 
from  it.  Evidence  might  be  brought  forward  against 
the  belief  in  God,  but  the  religious  man  could  reply 
that  there  was  still  a  chance  (however  small  it  might 
appear)  that  he  was  right,  and  on  the  strength  of  this 
chance  and  by  the  demands  of  his  passional  nature,  he 
intended  to  regulate  his  life  on  the  assumption  that  the 
religious  hypothesis  was  the  true  one.  The  arguments  I 
am  about  to  describe  are  attempts  to  advance  from  this 
last  trench  and  to  capture  some  of  the  intervening  coun- 


276  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


try.  They  are  attempts  to  show  that  not  merely  is  there 
a  chance  that  the  religious  explanation  may  be  the  true 
one,  but  that  there  is  a  strong  presumption  in  its  favour; 
not  merely  that  we  may  accept  it  but  that  we  ought  to. 
It  is  not  possible  to  do  more  than  sketch  a  few  of  the 
main  lines  of  thought  which  may  be  developed,  rather 
as  indications  of  the  directions  in  which  evidence  may 
be  looked  for,  than  with  any  idea  that  they  will  be 
found  convincing  in  the  attenuated  form  in  which  I  am 
going  to  present  them. 

I  will  first  take  the  lines  of  argument  developed  by 
Mr  Will  Spens  in  his  Belief  and  Practice.  These  are: 
first,  a  justification  of  the  appeal  to  intuition  in  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  doctrine  from  religious  experience  by  the 
proved  success  of  the  same  appeal  to  intuition  in  the 
development  of  scientific  doctrine  from  scientific  data. 
Secondly,  he  finds  in  the  explanation  given  by  theology 
of  religious  experience,  positive  features  which  help  to 
establish  the  validity  of  that  explanation.  Such  are,  its 
coherency  and  the  power  of  particular  beliefs  to  be  ex¬ 
tended  over  other  kinds  of  experience  than  those  for 
which  they  were  originally  found  to  be  successful  guides. 
On  the  whole,  a  consistent  system  is  yielded  by  the  vari¬ 
ous  particular  doctrines  which  have  been  found  best  to 
provide  a  guide  to  religious  experience.  The  author  con¬ 
cludes  that  these  facts  provide  very  strong  evidence  for 
the  validity  of  theology  as  a  system  of  thought.  I  pro¬ 
pose  later  to  develop  more  fully  a  line  of  thought  closely 
related  to  the  second  of  these.  My  present  purpose  in 
giving  this  bare  and  inadequate  outline  of  two  argu¬ 
ments  from  a  book  which  follows  the  empirical  method, 
is  merely  to  illustrate  the  fact  that  it  is  possible  to  argue 
from  religious  experience  to  the  truth  of  religious 
doctrine  without  using  the  crude  and  obviously  un- 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS  277 

sound  psychological  argument  which  was  discussed 
earlier. 

Another  line  of  argument  may  be  drawn  from  the 
region  of  mental  therapy.  Modern  psycho-pathology 
inclines  towards  the  view  that  the  neuroses  have  their 
origin  in  the  failure  of  the  libido  of  the  neurotic  to  find 
its  normal  outlet  in  the  real  world.  It  then  finds  satis¬ 
faction  by  the  creation  of  the  neurotic  symptoms,  which 
are  substitutes  for  the  normal  employment  of  the  libido. 
In  emotional  religion,  the  libido  may  be  redirected  in 
default  of  its  normal  earthly  outlet  to  the  religious 
object  of  love — God. 

It  has  been  said  that  religion  is  only  a  form  of  neu¬ 
rosis  which,  for  some  reason,  is  not  regarded  as  patho¬ 
logical.  There  is,  however,  a  good  reason  why  the 
religious  redirection  of  the  libido  is  not  considered  to  be 
pathological,  for,  unlike  the  neurotic  symptom,  it  pro¬ 
vides  a  permanent  and  satisfactory  solution  of  the  erotic 
conflict.  A  practising  psychoanalyst,  completely  scep¬ 
tical  in  matters  of  religion,  once  told  the  present  writer 
that  in  nearly  all  his  cases  he  found  some  religious  belief 
which  he  did  not  touch  because  experience  had  taught 
him  that  it  was  the  strongest  force  for  the  patient’s  re¬ 
covery.  One  school  of  psychoanalysts — the  Zurich 
school,  followers  of  Dr  Jung — make  the  inculcation  of 
the  religious  motive  a  part  of  their  therapeutic  method. 

This  would  seem  to  suggest  very  strongly  that  the  re¬ 
ligious  solution  of  the  erotic  conflict  is  different  in  kind 
from  the  neurotic  solution,  and  that  when  the  soul  which 
has  found  no  earthly  satisfaction  for  its  love  directs  that 
love  to  God,  it  is  doing  something  very  different  from 
the  creation  of  a  phantasy  love-object  in  place  of  a  real 
one.  It  has  found  a  satisfactory  resting-place  for  its  love 


278 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


instead  of  finding  an  unsatisfactory  solution  of  the  con¬ 
flict  between  desire  and  reality  in  the  neurotic  symptom 
or  in  the  phantasy.  Now,  many  of  the  theories  about 
religion  which  have  been  suggested  by  psychology  of 
this  type  do,  in  fact,  suppose  that  the  objects  of  religion 
are  merely  phantasies  woven  by  man  to  satisfy  his  emo¬ 
tional  needs.  But  that  there  is  this  difference  between 
the  effectiveness  of  these  two  w^ays  of  dealing  wdth  his 
desire,  seems  to  suggest  that  such  different  effects  do 
not  proceed  from  the  same  cause.  I  have  pointed  out 
in  an  earlier  chapter  that  the  acceptance  of  religion 
does,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  depend  very  largely  on  its 
power  to  satisfy  man’s  emotional  needs,  and  that  emo¬ 
tional  religion  owes  much  of  its  character  to  its  intimate 
connection  with  human  love.  It  seems  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  the  genuine  satisfactoriness  of  the  relig¬ 
ious  solution  of  the  erotic  conflict  is  the  result  of  the 
fact  that  its  object  is  a  real  one — that  God  is  not  merely 
a  phantasy  creation  of  the  worshipping  mind. 

There  is  a  third  method  of  approaching  the  problem 
wThich  is  important.  We  may  consider  that  its  power  to 
rationalise  (that  is,  to  give  a  coherent,  intelligible  and 
reasonably  simple  account  of)  experience  is  a  criterion 
(however  imperfect)  of  the  truth  of  a  religious  doctrine. 
It  is  necessary  here  to  make  a  distinction  between  this 
position  and  that  of  the  later  pragmatists,  who  would 
consider  that  the  truth  of  a  doctrine  is  simply  its  power 
to  rationalise  experience,  and  that  any  question  of  its 
relation  to  an  objective  reality  is  meaningless.  The 
position  I  am  at  present  describing  is  that  a  doctrine 
rationalises  experience  because  it  has,  certainly  in  a 
limited  and  relative  way,  that  relation  to  an  objective 
reality  which  we  call  truth. 

This,  we  may  notice,  is  the  criterion  used  to  test  the 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


279 


truth  of  a  scientific  theory.  The  atomic  theory  of  Dalton 
was  originated  because  it  gave  a  coherent  and  intelli¬ 
gible  account  of  a  certain  number  of  physical  facts  of 
which  the  hypothesis  of  an  infinitely  divisible  matter 
gave  no  explanation  or  with  which  it  could  only  be 
reconciled  by  a  large  number  of  arbitrary  and  compli¬ 
cated  assumptions.  Such  facts  were  the  following:  the 
lawr  of  combination  in  definite  proportions,  the  law  of 
multiple  proportions,  and  the  law  of  combination  in 
simple  proportions  by  volume.  This  theory  has  also 
shown  its  power  to  rationalise  other  facts  not  known  to 
its  discoverer.  Such  are:  the  rates  of  diffusion  of  gases, 
the  connection  between  the  abnormal  molecular  weights 
of  electrolytes  in  solution  and  the  electrical  conductivity 
of  these  solutions,  and  the  success  of  Van  der  Waal’s 
correction  of  Boyle’s  Law.  Both  its  power  of  rationalis¬ 
ing  the  facts  known  to  its  originator,  and  still  more  its 
power  of  rationalising  later  discoveries,  give  us  reason 
for  supposing  that  it  possesses  a  real,  though  perhaps 
partial,  insight  into  truth.  We  feel  confident  that,  what¬ 
ever  new  discoveries  about  the  constitution  of  matter 
may  be  made  (such  as  those  embodied  in  the  electronic 
theory),  the  conception  of  discrete  (though  not  neces¬ 
sarily  indivisible)  particles  is  nearer  the  truth  about  the 
real  nature  of  matter  than  would  be  the  alternative 
theory. 

It  is  necessary,  however,  to  face  fairly  the  weaknesses 
and  defects  of  this  criterion,  which  are  the  weaknesses 
and  defects  of  the  empirical  method  itself.  Particular 
experiences  may  be  illusory,  i.e.  the  simple  and  intelli¬ 
gible  explanation  to  which  they  appear  to  point  may 
not  be  the  true  one.  Thus,  the  simple  rationalisation  of 
monitory  voices  is  that  the  person  hearing  them  is  in 
communication  with  a  spirit,  but  a  more  careful  psycho- 


280 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


logical  investigation  may  lead  us  to  conclude  that  they 
are  really  received  from  unconscious  levels  of  his  own 
mind.  The  appearance  of  purpose  in  the  construction  of 
organisms  is  rationalised  in  a  simple  and  satisfactory 
way  by  the  assumption  of  an  intelligent  creator,  but  it 
may  be  argued  that  this  appearance  can  be  the  effect  of 
mechanical  causes  acting  under  particular  conditions. 
It  is  not,  therefore,  sufficient  to  accept  the  most  satis¬ 
factory  rationalisation  of  any  particular  experience.  It 
is  also  necessary  to  ask  what  is  the  probability  that  it  is 
really  due  to  some  other  cause,  that  its  apparent  in¬ 
dication  of  the  simple  rationalisation  is  an  illusion. 
Neglect  to  do  this  is  characteristic  of  infantile  and 
primitive  modes  of  thinking.  When,  however,  different 
experiences  covering  a  wTide  range  point  to  rationalisa¬ 
tions,  which  are  all  essentially  the  same,  the  probability 
of  error  becomes  less.  The  probability  of  error  is,  in 
fact,  equal  to  the  product  of  the  probabilities  of  illusion 
in  each  particular  case.  But  however  small  we  may  con¬ 
sider  this  probability  to  be,  it  cannot  be  zero.  We  can 
have  a  high  degree  of  probability  that  the  concordant 
indications  of  a  wide  range  of  experience  are  not  entirely 
illusory,  but  we  cannot  have  metaphysical  certainty.  At 
the  same  time,  we  have  no  reason  foFsupposing  that  the 
truths  we  have  reached  are  absolute,  any  more  than  we 
have  in  the  case  of  the  atomic  theory.  A  wider  experi¬ 
ence  has  shown  that  it  is  necessary  to  modify  that 
theory  and  to  regard  the  atom,  not  as  an  indivisible 
unit,  but  as  a  system  of  negatively  charged  particles 
rapidly  moving  in  orbits  around  a  positive  nucleus.  But 
this  in  no  way  alters  the  fact  that  the  atomic  theory  con¬ 
tained  a  real  advance  in  truth  from  earlier  theories.  But 
the  truth  arrived  at  was  not  absolute  and  final.  This 
fact  might  equally  well  have  been  illustrated  by  the 
Newtonian  physics  and  the  theory  of  relativity.  In 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS 


281 


the  same  way,  there  is  no  reason  for  claiming  finality  in 
religious  doctrines;  but  so  far  as  they  are  legitimate 
rationalisations  from  experience,  later  experience  may 
be  expected  to  modify,  but  not  overthrow,  these  earlier 
rationalisations. 

If  this  method  be  accepted  as  a  valid  one,  it  will  mean 
that  where  in  earlier  chapters  the  methods  by  which  I 
suppose  the  mind  to  have  reached  religious  belief  by  a 
process  of  explaining  experience,  were  outlined  and 
were  noted  as  facts  of  merely  psychological  interest,  we 
shall  now  regard  them  as  of  importance  in  helping  to 
establish  the  truth  of  those  beliefs.  The  fact  that  the 
belief  in  God  rationalises,  let  us  say,  our  experience  of 
the  moral  conflict,  will  be  one  piece  of  evidence  in 
favour  of  the  view  that  the  belief  in  God  is  a  true 
one.  If  we  find  that  this  same  belief  also  rationalises 
the  facts  of  religious  experience  the  evidence  is  pro¬ 
portionately  strengthened,  and  so  on  for  all  the  ex¬ 
perience  we  can  investigate  which  is  relevant  to  the 
belief  in  question. 

To  sum  up,  we  may  regard  its  power  to  rationalise 
experience  (which  will  include  subjective  experience) 
as  a  criterion  of  the  truth  of  a  religious  hypothesis,  as  it 
is  of  a  scientific  hypothesis.  Since  we  can  never  be  sure 
that  particular  experiences  are  not  illusory,  we  can 
never  say  more  than  that  the  success  of  a  religious  doc¬ 
trine  in  rationalising  experience  creates  a  strong  pre¬ 
sumption  in  favour  of  its  truth.  A  further  presumption 
is  created  by  its  power  to  rationalise  different  and 
independent  kinds  of  experience. 

In  practice  we  find  ourselves  perpetually  adopting 
this  test  of  its  ability  to  rationalise  independent  kinds 
of  experience  as  a  criterion  of  religious  truth.  The 
critically  reflective  mystic  believes  in  his  experiences 
only  when  they  have  as  their  result  the  progress  of  the 


282  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGION 


soul  in  virtue.  If  he  be  a  Catholic,  he  adds  that  they 
must  be  in  conformity  with  the  teachings  of  the  Church ; 
if  a  Protestant,  with  the  teachings  of  the  Bible.  We  may 
state  his  position  in  other  words  by  saying  that  the 
justification  of  religious  experience  must  be  by  its  con¬ 
formity  with  the  demands  of  the  moral  consciousness 
and  with  authority  in  religion  as  attested  in  other  wTays. 

If  we  find  that  by  following  the  dictates  of  religious 
experience,  we  build  up  a  system  which,  on  the  whole, 
corresponds  with  the  religious  system  built  up  from  con¬ 
sideration  of  the  other  types  of  relevant  experience — 
i.e.  the  facts  of  the  natural  world,  the  historical  facts 
of  religions  and  the  facts  of  the  moral  consciousness; 
then  we  have  a  very  impressive  argument  for  the  gen¬ 
eral  validity  of  religious  experience.  It  is  not  necessary 
for  the  purpose  of  this  argument  to  show  that  one  of 
these  four  ways  of  approaching  the  truths  of  religion  is 
certainly  valid  in  itself  and  that  the  others  may  be 
justified  because  they  are  seen  to  point  in  the  same 
direction.  LTndoubtedly  an  argument  in  this  form 
would  be  simpler  and  more  direct.  It  is  enough  to  show 
that  all  four  of  these  independent  ways  of  approach 
point  to  a  solution  of  the  problems  of  religion  which  is 
substantially  identical  to  provide  a  strong  presumption 
that  they  are  all  based  on  a  real  insight  into  truth.  If 
the  God  revealed  by  religious  experience  is  found  to  be, 
in  fact,  the  God  required  by  the  moral  consciousness, 
and  to  be  the  God  required  to  explain  the  w^orld  as  we 
find  it,  and  to  be  the  God  revealed  in  historical  Chris¬ 
tianity,  then  the  probability  that  each  of  these  largely 
independent  lines  of  approach  to  God  is  based  on  error 
becomes  small.  The  probability  that  the  concordant 
result  of  all  four  expresses  some  real  insight  into  ob¬ 
jective  reality  becomes  proportionately  great. 


INDEX 


Acts,  69,  173 
Adler,  258 

Aesthetic  argument,  40,  80 
Affect,  94 

Affective  element  in  religion,  13, 
17,  58  ff. 

—  prayer,  181 

—  type  of  religion,  69  ff. 

Al  Ghazzali,  90,  206 
Anaesthetic  revelation,  62 
Anger,  95 

VAmiee  Sociologique,  143  ff. 
Anselm,  12 
Aquinas,  50 

Arguments  for  the  existence  ol 
God.  79,  89,  273 
Arya  Samaj,  160 
Asana  positions,  168 
Asceticism,  35,  212,  257 
Atomic  theory,  278 
Augustine,  36.  187,  196  ff. 
Automatism,  234,  245 
Autosuggestion,  24,  51,  162  ff., 
265 

Baudouin,  162,  184 
Beauty,  39 
Behaviour,  5 

Beneficence,  experience  of,  36 
Bergson,  89,  212  n. 

Billy  Sunday,  152 
Binet,  106 
Blood,  61 
Booth,  216  ff. 

Brownlow  North,  28,  193  ff. 
Buddhism,  160 
Bunyan,  53  ff. 

Caldecott,  44 

Catherine  of  Genoa,  36,  213, 
238 


Cellini,  2,  55 
Ceremonial,  69 
Certainty,  66,  273 
Censorship,  endopsychic,  112 
Character,  100,  117 
Chastity,  133 
Child,  religion  of,  17,  132 
Coe,  15,  49 
Cognition,  93 
Cohen,  129,  134 
Collective  ideas,  146 
Colloquy,  176 
Confession,  56,  179 
Conflict,  mental,  188,  206 
Consciousness,  102 
Consecration,  178 
Contemplation,  6S,  226  ff. 

—  Ignatian,  178 
Contention,  166,  168 
Contrasuggestion,  23,  152 
Conversion,  83,  187  ff.,  244 

—  adolescent,  16,  66,  131,  187, 
215  ff. 

—  adult,  187,  191  ff. 

—  intellectual,  191,  196  ff. 

—  moral,  191  ff. 

—  mystical,  191,  205  ff.,  226 

—  social,  191,  201  ff. 

Coue,  162 

Coventry  Patmore,  135 

Dale,  40 
Dalton,  279 
Davenport,  154,  155,  156 
Delacroix,  225,  269 
Dementia  praecox,  238 
Descartes,  79,  90 
Devil,  the,  35,  75,  270 
Dictionary  oj  Psychological  Medi¬ 
cine,  57 


283 


INDEX 


284 

Dissociation  of  personality,  240, 
245,  248 

Dostoieffsky,  63 
Dreams,  53,  111,  112,  114,  204, 
253,  268 

Dualism,  37,  42,  48 
Durkheim,  144 

Ecstasy,  230  ff,  249  ff.,  270 
Elliot  Smith,  125 
Emotion,  94  ff. 

Empirical  method,  9,  272 
Epilepsy,  63 

Evan  Roberts,  68,  152,J.57,  206 
Evelyn  Underhill,  207  n. 

Evil,  35,  41 

Experiential  element  in  religion, 
13 

Extroversion,  238  ff.,  254 

Faculty  psychology,  93 
—  transcendental,  7 
Faith,  274 
Fasting,  77,  134 
Faust,  33,  70 
Fear,  22 
Feeling,  93 
Feuerbach,  133,  264 
Flaubert,  70 
Flournoy,  242  ff. 

Francis,  43 
Frazer,  3 

Freud,  107  ff.,  212  n. 

G ALTON,  122 

Gaps  in  knowledge,  261,  263 
Ghost  dance,  157 
Givenness,  267 
Glossolalia,  156 
God,  belief  in,  12)  ff. 

Goethe,  32 

Grace  Abounding ,  53 

Guyon,  213,  233 

Habit,  118 
Hall,  132,  187 
Hallucination,  18,  75 
Hardy,  43 

Harmony,  experience  of,  38 
Hart,  81 
Hashish,  63 


Hatred,  97 
Head,  76 
Hegel,  2 
Hell,  153,  192 

Herd  (or  gregarious)  instinct, 
122,  125,  140  ff.,  159,  212 
—  suggestion,  23,  149 
Hoffding,  4 
Hugel,  von,  225,  238  ff. 

Hypnosis,  18,  20,  167,  246,  265 
Hysteria,  20,  155,  237,  245 

Ignatius  Loyola,  175 
Immanence,  34 

Indescribability  of  mystical  ex¬ 
perience,  251 

Infantile  psyche,  114  n.,  147,  185 
Instincts,  110,  117  ff. 
Intellectualisation,  31,  41 
Introspection,  11,  113 
Introversion,  236  ff.,  254,  258 
Intuition,  73,  268 

James,  37,  48,  59,  87,  123,  203, 
274 

Jami,  135 
Janet,  56,  239 
Jansenism,  49,  208 
Jevon,  42  n. 

John  of  the  Cross,  132,  236 
Jonathan  Edwards,  153,  192 
Julian  of  Norwich,  137 
Jung,  136,  189,  212  n.,  237,  277 

Kentucky  camp-meetings,  155 

Lawrence,  Brother,  34 
Le  Bon,  84,  143,  148 
Leuba,  2,  10,  73,  261,  268  n. 
Libido,  212,  236  ff.,  277 
Ligature,  228 
Liguori,  57 
Lourdes,  182 

Love,  22,  99,  101,  129,  133,  209, 
212,  256,  278 

McDougall,  19,  66,  96,  97,  100, 
142 

McTaggart,  3 
Mahomet,  65 
Mantra  Yoga,  175 


INDEX 


285 


Martineau,  3 
Mass,  159 

Meditation,  69,  175  ff. 
Metaphysics,  271,  273 
Method  of  Psychology  of  Re¬ 
ligion,  5  ff. 

Moods,  97 

Moral  argument,  46,  SO 

—  conflict,  45,  110 

Moral  element  in  religion,  13, 
45  ff. 

—  law,  45 

—  principles,  22 

—  type  of  religion,  49 
Myers,  C.  S.,  96 

Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  2,  104,  113 
Mysticism,  58,  101,  132,  205, 

225  ff.,  269 

Natural  element  in  religion,  13, 
30 

—  type  of  religion,  44 
Nature  mysticism,  31 
Negative  self-feeling,  66 
Neurosis  and  religion.  277 
New  Thought,  162,  183 
Night  of  the  Soul,  227,  236 
Normality,  14 

Nouet,  181 

Objective  validity  of  religious 
experience,  266  ff.,  282 
Obsessions,  54 

Ontological  argument,  79,  88 
Optimism,  42 
Overcompensation,  23 

Pachomius,  52 
Paley,  30,  38 
Pantheism,  32 
Parental  complex,  136,  255 

—  instinct,  121 
Pascal,  206,  207  ff. 

Paul,  187,  189 
Penances,  177,  235 
Perry,  125 
Pfister,  137  n. 

Philosophy  of  religion,  6,  260, 
271 

Poulain,  173,  182  n.,  225,  228, 
269 


Pragmatism,  278 
Pranayama,  177 
Pratt,  55,  155,  159,  225,  262  ff. 
Prayer,  162,  171  ff. 

—  by  rhythmical  beats,  177 

—  of  quiet,  228,  247 

—  of  simplicity,  166,  180,  226, 
228 

—  of  union,  229 

Prayer,  mental,  21,  172,  175  ff. 

—  vocal,  173,  174 
Preconscious,  108,  112 
Presence  of  God,  feeling  of,  59 

67 

Prestige,  22,  24,  151 
Prideaux,  23,  96 
Providence,  37,  126 
Pseudo-Dionysius,  237 
Psyche,  128  n. 

Psychoanalysis,  22,  111,  136  ff., 
246,  264 

Psychological  laws,  261 
Puritanism,  49 

Questionnaire,  10 
Quietism,  167,  180,  186 

Rational  elements  in  religion,  13, 
78  ff. 

—  type  of  religion,  88  ff. 
Rationalisation,  81  ff.,  Ill 
Raymond,  56 

Reality  of  objects  of  religion,  6 
Regression,  22,  136 
Relativity,  280 
Religion,  definition  of,  4 
Religious  consciousness,  4 

—  experience,  5 
Repression,  109,  188,  205 
Research  workers,  scientific,  214 
Resistance,  111,  188,  196 
Revelation,  271,  273 
Reverence,  100 

Reverie,  165,  169 
Reversed  effort,  law  of,  51,  163, 
172 

Revivals,  152  ff. 

Ribot,  78,  98 
Rivers,  21,  23,  113,  120 
Rosary,  175 
Royce,  4 


286 


INDEX 


Rulman  Merswin,  207 
Ruskin,  44 

Sadhu  Sundar  Singh,  75  n.,  77, 
115  n.,  201,  227,  230 
Sainthood,  48 
Salvation  Army,  9,  24 
ScARAMELLI,  228 
SCHROEDER,  127  ff. 

Scientific  hypothesis,  279  ff. 
Self-consciousness,  60 
Self-preservation,  instincts  of, 
121 

Sentiment,  97  ff. 

—  the  religious,  100,  124,  179, 
213,  226 

Sentimentalism,  70 
Sex-instinct,  120,  124,  127  ff.,  222, 
255 

Shaker  religion,  157 
Shand,  96  ff. 

SlLBERER,  258 

Sin,  concern  for,  50,  66 

—  meditation  on,  176 

—  the  unpardonable,  55,  57 
Sorley,  266 

Spens,  276 

Spiritual  Marriage,  232  ff.,  238, 
254 

Spurgeon,  150,  157 
Starbuck,  10,  34,  65,  124,  131, 
187,  215,  219  ff. 

Stories  of  Grace,  27,  192 
Subconscious,  6,  103 
Sublimation,  110,  112,  124,  134, 
213,  223,  259 
Sufism,  90,  206 
Suggestibility,  20  ff.,  149,  184 
Suggestion,  17  ff.,  114,  221,  265 

—  post-hypnotic,  103 
Suppression,  110,  133,  213 
Supraconscious,  7,  105 
Suso,  213 

Swearing  Tom,  192,  196 


Swift,  99 
Swinburne,  33,  61 
Symbolism,  114,  147 
Symonds,  61 

Teaching,  religious,  26 
Teresa,  68,  74,  76,  173,  228  ff., 
240,  270 

Thinking,  31,  114,  165 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  36,  142 
Thoreau,  31 
Torrey,  149 

Traditional  element  in  religion, 
13,  16  ff.,  146,  251 

—  type  of  religion,  27 
Transference,  22,  27,  246 
Trials,  235 

Trotter,  23,  140 
Types,  14 

Unconscious,  102  ff.,  268 

—  incubation,  189,  203 

Van  Teslaar,  128  n. 

Ve,  Mlle,  242  ff. 

Virgin  Mary,  138 
Visions  and  locutions,  73  ff.,  205, 
207,  226,  268 
Visual  imagery,  76,  175 

Ward,  96 

Way,  the  threefold,  228 
Webb,  148  n. 

Wesley,  157 

Will,  94,  185,  186,  211,  253 
Will  to  Believe,  274 
Wish-fulfilment,  47,  265 
Wordsworth,  33 
Worship,  159  ff. 

Yoga,  165  ff.,  231 
Younghusband,  43 

Zoroastrianism,  42 


Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Libra  y 


1  1012  01006  0897 


